


House of Mirrors: a slasher au

by MisasBiggestFan



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Aromantic, Horror, Illustrated, No Romance, Nonbinary Character, Slasher AU, most of the other wammys boys make brief appearances!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-20 05:56:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisasBiggestFan/pseuds/MisasBiggestFan
Summary: Beyond Birthday knows that everyone at Wammy's House will die-and soon. He doesn't know what will happen, but he does know that he has to get his best friend, A, out of the House in order to save their life. Meanwhile, his idol, Misa Misa, is in town for a concert, and Beyond discovers that they have more in common than he'd ever realized.Able studies him and lets out a breath. They look down at their fingers, wrapped tightly around his wrist.“Did you…” Able starts and then they look up into his face, their eyes wide and serious behind their oversized blue glasses. Their words trail off. “Did you…” Kill Roger. Did you kill Roger, was what his best friend in the whole world was asking him.





	1. two days and eleven hours

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING  
this is an illustrated novel! if the images won't load, highlight the invisible text underneath each box for an image description! if it's not working on mobile, please let me know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wammy's House is faced with Roger's sudden and violent death. The only person it's not so sudden for is Beyond Birthday, who's genius lies in skillfully managing to make everyone around him hate him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: some mild blood. images of dead bodies, but with very little detail.

PROLOGUE

Roger is dead.

In the front yard, the electronic iron gate shudders.

CHAPTER ONE

image: beyond scrolls through his phone

image: beyond clicks on ‘murder eyes’ in the ‘obsessions’ album

image: with his phone set down, he turns up the dial on a speaker as high as it will go

image: his hand balances on a ballet beam

image: his fingers tap

image: he pushes off

Beyond likes the attention that comes from turning his music up too loud in places people can hear it. He relishes the way he gets on people’s nerves. He figures, as the blaring, raucous tune of ‘Murder Eyes’ by Misa Misa bursts violently out of the dance studio speakers, that he could write a whole book about how to make everyone in your general vicinity hate your guts. After all, he’s an expert.

image: beyond dances in the studio. He doesn’t do it particularly well

image: still dancing. Bless. It’s about the passion, not the skill

image: a door opens

image: able steps inside, their arms folded. The door is shut behind them

This is Able. They unplug Beyond’s phone from the speaker and the music stops-a screaming silence left behind in its absence. They do this to get his attention, but also simply because they’ll take any opportunity to torment nearly anyone at all. They’re what the staff at the children’s home call “a mean son of a bitch”, even if they won’t say it to Able’s face.

Beyond stops dancing and turns and drops his arms and for a second, he and his best friend stare each other down like two rogue cowboys in a town not big enough for the both of them. Beyond imagines he can see a tumbleweed.

image: able's speaking

“Roger’s dead,” Able says.

image: beyond doesn't look surprised

“Huh,” Beyond says. “No kidding.” 

image: title card

Able walks further into the room. They take Beyond’s phone with them.

“Found him with a knife in the top of his head. Poor old dude.” They look down at Beyond’s phone and scroll a little as they lazily make their way towards him. “Why aren’t you dancing to something worthwhile, Bee? I mean, Misa Misa? Really?”

“She’s good.”

“Good if you like noise.”

“You _ do _ like noise.” 

“I sort of thought,” Able says. “That you’d be a little more… I dunno. Surprised. About Roger.”

“I am. I am surprised.”

“You don’t sound it.”

“Fuck off, I’m in shock.”

“Yeah, right.”

Able finally reaches him and the only way Beyond can tell that they’re more disturbed about Roger’s death than they’re letting on is the fact that they won’t meet his eyes now. They look down at his phone and then they slap it back into his open hand.

“I’m surprised L’s dead. And that him and Roger are dead so soon after each other,” Beyond says.

Able shrugs and folds their arms.

“Guess that’s just what people do, isn’t it, Backup. Die, I mean.”

That afternoon, Beyond’s using a pocket knife to carve things into his desk at school. He sits in the back so the teachers don’t notice. Or if they do, they don’t say anything. Past the window beside him, squirrels run up and down a tree and chitter loudly.

Able, to their credit, takes notes like their life depends on it. They sit in the back with Beyond, but they’re a star student. Criminal psychology class is going on right now. Or is it forensics? Theory of law? Beyond’s not one hundred percent positive-he’s not paying attention.

This isn’t to say that he’s not a star student as well because he is. In fact, he and Able are co-valedictorians at Wammy’s House, a group home and school for gifted children that have been removed from both their birth homes _ and _ their foster homes for various reasons. Well, they are now that Near and Mello are out of the running at least. 

Beyond feels like him and everyone else here were all collected together from various corners of the world like human trophies and he doesn’t really like that feeling. 

Anyway, as co-valedictorian of child trophies, he _ would _ be paying attention. It’s just that he’s a little bit busy right now.

image: beyond's knife carves into his desk

The overhead speaker interrupts the lecturing teacher.

“Ahem. If I could have everyone’s attention, please. Mr. Ruvie’s funeral will be held Friday morning. Mr. Wammy is arriving tonight and everyone needs to be on their best behavior.”

While the announcements drone, Beyond focuses on the number he’s carving into the desk. It’s a number 1, one number in a long list of numbers he’s been patiently working into the wood for the past few weeks. His knife slips on the curve of a line and slices into the pad of his pointer finger just enough to draw blood. He winces and puts his finger into his mouth and when the announcement finishes, he realizes it’s too quiet, something’s missing.

He looks over. In the tree just past the window, one of the squirrels is on it’s back in the dirt-it’s stiff and silent.

In the headmistress’s office a few hours later, Beyond is still fidgeting with the cut on his finger, opening it until it bleeds again.

“‘Best behavior’ goes double for the two of you,” Mrs. Carver says.

Able smiles sweetly at her. There’s something snake-like about them, Beyond’s always thought.

“What do you think we’d do, Mrs. Carver?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care to know. I need to hear you say it, Able. You too, Backup.”

“What?” Beyond says, looking up finally.

Mrs. Carver’s frown deepens. Her arms are crossed over her chest tight and she’s standing in front of her desk and leering down at Beyond and Able, who are seated in front of her.

“You’re too old for this, you’re _ both _ too old for this,” she says angrily and it seems to Beyond like she wants to say more, but she’s scared to push him too far. So instead, she just eyes them both and heaves a breath and says, “Tell me you’ll behave for Mr. Wammy and the funeral.”

“We will, Mrs. Carver,” Able says.

“Backup?” Mrs. Carver glares. 

“I’ll behave,” Beyond says.

She stares them both down hard, as if willing them to do something. In the silence, Beyond looks back down at his split finger distractedly. 

image: cut finger. blood is beading up

“Mrs. Carver, are you actually going to ask us to solve Roger’s murder or are we just gonna sit here and look at each other funny,” Able finally says.

Mrs. Carver looks back at Able and frowns.

“That’s ‘Mr. Ruvie’ to you, Able.” She says even though it hardly matters anymore because the guy is dead. She presses her lips together. “But yes, I’m giving you two the case. Of course, the police have to be involved too, but you children will do it faster than them.” She reaches over and picks up a key off the desk and passes it off to Able. “This is the key to his office. Please remember, this is a crime scene now, not a place to play.”

“Please, Lucille,” Able says exasperatedly. They stand. “I think me and Bee know more about crime scenes than you.

Roger’s office is something of a mess. The body was taken away that morning and police have been shuffling in and out all afternoon. There are tags left where blood had been mopped up and chalk marks where Roger’s body had been.

Able strolls around the room, shuffling through the photos of the body they’d been given with an empty stare. 

image: roger dead in his chair

image: roger in the morgue

Beyond examines the chair Roger died in. Blood is still crusted onto the edge of the desk, a spot the cleaning staff had missed from earlier that morning. He thinks he should be sadder for Roger, but he isn’t. Shouldn’t someone cry for him? Shouldn’t he and Able, like, pay their respects or whatever? He’s never been entirely sure what this means but he knows it’s something he’s not doing.

“There’s a Misa Misa concert coming up around here,” he mentions to Able.

“I know,” Able says.

“Sneak in with me.”

Able scoffs.

“If I wanted to hear someone scream for two hours, I’d put rats in Linda’s bed again.”

“Please, Able? It’ll be fun-I know you like her stuff.”

“When is it?”

“A few days.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll come if you don’t piss me off before then. Now focus on the case, wouldya.”

Beyond circles the desk again lazily. Able’s right, he’s barely thinking about Roger’s death. He’s got… More important things on his mind.

“Who would even want Roger dead?” Able muses out loud.

“Who wouldn’t,” Beyond retorts stupidly, the snide words escaping his mouth before he can think.

He freezes. 

image: able is looking over, staring suspiciously

Beyond pictures that tumbleweed again before he breaks away from their suspicious glare and looks at his feet.

“What,” he says defensively. “No one _ really _ liked him, it wasn’t just me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Able says stiffly and they look back down at the pictures in their hands and Beyond thinks he knows what they’re thinking, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud. He barely says it to himself in his head.

Able thinks-no, suspects. No, _ worries _. That Beyond could have something to do with Roger's murder.

Able isn't the only person at Wammy's who thinks this and Beyond knows it. Everyone here knows a little more about him than he'd like and it makes people… Wary of him. Of where he came from. And he knows, even if he hasn’t heard anything himself, that ever since this morning, people have been talking behind his back.

He tries to put it out of his head and instead remembers dance practice this morning, and the books he could write on making people hate you.

Maybe people would like him better if he were smarter. Even though he’s one of the smartest kids here, he’s been cut from the running to be the next L because of… Well, because of certain things that he doesn’t feel the need to mention here. He’s just been cut, that’s all there is to it. And Able, too, probably. He’s not sure. He never asked. But it certainly wasn’t him and A in the office with Roger almost a month ago, being offered the position of L number two. That was Near and Mello, of course. And they took it and they’re going to leave soon and Able and Beyond are left behind, sore losers in a game they were banned from ages ago. Beyond thinks that someone somewhere had been thinking, ‘well Able and Backup can’t be L, but they can at the very least solve one measly murder that went on right under their noses, so let’s give them that to fill up their time’.

Maybe people would like him better if he were nicer. Or if he were shyer. Or less weird. Or different, just different. Maybe people would like him if every single thing about him were to change. And maybe he ought to try it, he thinks. And he would, too, except for one little thing that makes all the effort it would be not worth it.

Beyond can see when these people will die. He can see it right above their heads in funny floating numbers, every single one of them. He’s been able to see it for years.

And everyone at Wammy’s House will be dead very, very soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI EVERYONE  
thank you so much for reading!! i hope you liked CHAPTER ONE!! i've been working on this now for ages and i'm SO ready to share! i'm going to post every monday and thursday until the last chapter and epilogue goes up on Halloween!!  
(heads up that this chapter definitely has the most art LOL it included 18 whole images! and it evens out a little more by the rest of the chapters.)
> 
> don't forget to bookmark, subscribe, and let me know what you thought of this chapter!! 
> 
> 42 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN


	2. two days and five hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond meets someone unexpected while shoplifting at the mall. Is it coincidence? Is it... Fate??

Okay, maybe saying _ everyone _ will die is a little bit of a stretch. But enough people are on the chopping block that it’s concerning.

Mrs. Carver’s next. Then Mr. Wammy, Linda, Matt, Mello, Near, some other teachers, at least five kids Beyond doesn’t know that well, and then-

And then… Able.

Beyond doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but he assumes that something must happen here at Wammy’s, something disastrous. Maybe a fire will start, or a gas leak, or a bout of bad food poisoning. Of course, it’d be _ nice _ if he could save everyone. But he’s mostly interested in saving Able.

The thing is, he’s seen these numbers his whole life, numbers and names, and he’s never once seen them change. He’s not sure they can. He sort of thinks everyone here is doomed tonight, no matter what he does, and if he tries to warn everyone, they’ll say he’s crazy. It’s happened before. But for Able, he’s willing to try, really try. He’s willing to do anything. He has two days left ‘til That Day and he’ll admit it’s one of the only things really on his mind as of late. He’s got a plan.

Coincidentally, the Misa Misa concert he’s been looking forward to is on that same day. If he can get Able to sneak in with him, they can avoid whatever will happen at Wammy’s that night. Usually when they sneak out, they’ll stay out the whole night, so this is the perfect opportunity. He’ll keep them out with him, safe and far away, until the numbers above their head change, and then they’ll go back and see whatever damage has been done. 

This is his careful plan, one that was on his mind throughout dance practice and throughout school and throughout investigating Roger’s office. 

(He’d always sort of assumed it’d be health problems or old age that would bring the old guy’s numbers to a close. So he _ was _ surprised to learn it was different.) 

After inspecting the office, Beyond leaves Able behind doing homework and sets off towards town on his own. 

On his way out of the house, he passes Near and Mello sitting in the hall. Mello’s playing one of Matt’s video games and Near is building a… A _ something _ out of a large collection of tarot cards.

“Bye, losers,” he says to them nastily on his way out, even though all things considered, he’s sort of the loser here, isn’t he? “Have fun rotting here.”

Mello side eyes him suspiciously. No doubt the rumors have reached him.

Beyond stops for a moment, his backpack over his shoulder, and peers down at whatever it is Near’s building.

“Do you even know what that’s gonna be,” he says.

“I know exactly what it’s going to be,” Near replies without looking up and he places another card. “Every card has a specific spot.”

“Alriiiiiight,” Beyond says. “So tell me what it is.”

He waits and Near doesn’t respond and Beyond’s about to just roll his eyes and go when Near holds up one tarot card. The wheel of fortune. Beyond’s surprised it’s not the fool, because that’s sort of Near’s sense of humor.

“Do you ever,” Near says and Beyond isn’t sure if he’s talking to him or to Mello. “Feel like. We’re not supposed to be here.”

Uh, yeah, Beyond thinks. Because _ I _ should be L. Me and Able.

“Like fate?” Mello says.

“I suppose,” Near says. He turns the card back and forth in his fingers. “Like something somewhere… Went wrong.”

“Fate’s not real,” Mello says. “We all just end up where we end up.”

“That’s not right,” Beyond says before he can stop himself. Near looks up with a sort of ‘oh you’re still here’ expression on his face. Isn’t he just a doll.

“You can’t prove it,” Mello says.

Beyond looks back and forth between them and shifts his backpack on his shoulder again and looks down.

“Alright,” he says. “I can’t.” But he also can’t get the image of their numbers-short, short numbers-out of his mind.

And then, he turns around and leaves.

Technically, he’s not supposed to go off campus without permission, but he does all the time anyway. Wammy’s House is huge and pretty remote. It’s miles away from town, but Beyond knows how to call a cab and then it’s just like, a thirty minute drive if you really step on it.

The campus itself is sprawling. It’s a renovated old church, complete with a creepy cemetery in the back that he and Able love to have dumb seances in and there’s a huge labyrinthine garden out front full of gothic old statues. Behind the cemetery is a small forest and there’s a rec room, including that dance studio, off in a free space of field to the left of the house. A gigantic wall surrounds the property, huge and made of brick. The electronic metal front gate used to have enough footholds for Beyond and Able to climb it, but Beyond fell once and broke his leg and since then, Roger had someone come and burn the footholds off so that now, it’s insurmountable and makes Beyond feel like he’s in prison, which of course freaks him out a little. He’s not fond of the idea of prison.

The cab finds him slipping through said gate, which is usually unlocked during the day. He punches numbers into the electric keypad and jumps back as the gate swings open too fast and too powerfully, nearly clipping him like always. And then he slides in the back of the cab and tells the driver to take him to the mall, an hour or so away. It’s an expensive drive, but he unfortunately doesn’t plan on paying the guy and when they arrive, he dashes out of the car and disappears. 

He’s getting supplies to cheat death. He steals a first aid kit, a few EpiPens (although Able doesn’t have any allergies), a poison kit, and more, cramming it all discreetly into his Akazukin Chacha backpack, the one he and Able colored themselves in marker. He can’t really imagine any scenario in which he might _ need _ one of these, but he’s not going to be surprised no matter what. Able is going to survive. They are going to live.

Beyond wonders as he examines a package of cotton face masks if Roger’s murder could have something to do with the rest of the upcoming death dates. It is certainly suspicious, but he has to admit that Roger was really involved with Mr. Wammy and L and everything-the guy had to have enemies. Maybe it’s a weird coincidence. Beyond has to consider the possibility that that’s all it is. He wonders if there’s a knife-proof kit he can buy to avoid Able getting a knife in the head.

He’s in the mall, coming out of a drugstore with a shifty ‘i just stole fifty dollars worth of stuff’ kind of look on his face when he sees her.

image: it’s misa misa. She’s across the way at another store front, eating ice cream and strolling all alone. She’s got on just a pair of black jeans and a black jacket and those red heart glasses

She’s clearly trying not to be noticed, but Beyond would know her anywhere. He has her memorized after all, and not to mention the name above her head that gives her away to him. And it’s numberless-just like him.

He freezes right where he is, which isn’t a great strategy when you’re walking out a store you’ve just robbed.

She keeps walking and it takes him a second to take another step in her direction. His heart has stopped, his stomach is at his feet. Time has slowed down. Maybe he’s overreacting, but this is so big and so unexpected, he thinks he might be going into shock. He might turn around and barf into his backpack.

He forces himself to take another step in her direction and then he gathers up all the vital organs that seem to have stopped working inside his chest and goes after her.

“Hey!” He manages to cry, his throat a little strangled. He can’t stop thinking about how she has no numbers, about how as long as he’s listened to her music and seen pictures of her face, she’s never had any numbers. How he’d never seen anyone like him in his whole entire seventeen years of life except for her, how that’s part of the reason why she’s so important to him and no one else understands. “Hey!” He says again. “Miss Amane!” (He wants to say ‘Misa’, of course, but he doesn’t want to call attention to her and he doesn’t want to come off as too forward, so he defaults in the most polite way he can.) 

She turns and he catches up to her finally and his mouth is dry. In his head, he sees his arms full of all those nonfunctioning vital organs-now that he’s caught her, he drops them all again.

“Hi?” Misa says and she looks a little confused. He watches her eyes trace the letters above his own head and he wants to shout for joy. Yes!! He screams in his own head. I was right, she’s like me!! I was _ right _!!

This may be the happiest day of Beyond Birthday’s life.

“Um, I-I’m Beyond,” Beyond says with a big, stupid grin he can’t seem to force off his face. He shouldn’t tell people his real name, it’s strictly against Wammy’s policy. He’d be punished within an inch of his life if Roger knew, if Roger was alive. But Beyond knows better than anyone that there’s no use giving a fake name to someone with eyes like him. “I just, um, I love your music. Your like, my favorite musician of all time. I’m sorry, I just saw you now and I had to, you know, I thought I’d, uh...” He is a person who is very rarely at a loss for words, very rarely caught off guard. It’s weird for him to stammer around like this. It probably just makes her think his Japanese is bad.

Misa Misa smiles back at him.

He’s smitten. He’s absolutely floored. He thinks he could melt into the ground. He could die on the spot and he’d be happy. She’s so pretty and sweet and cool and perfect. She absolutely _ glows _. If he wasn’t aromantic and could fall in love, he thinks he’d be head over heels in this very second but since he is and he can’t, he just gapes with his mouth open and hears the thud of his own heart in his ears.

“I’m so flattered,” she says with that big, beautiful smile. “It’s very nice to meet you!”

“Nice to meet you,” Beyond replies automatically and somewhat breathlessly. This is the moment of truth, no time to falter now, he has to get right down to it before she walks away again. “I, um, actually I’ve always wanted to ask, if I can-”

“Sure!” Misa says. She’s so perky, it’s like everything she says ends in an exclamation point. He loves it. She’s even more magical in person. “Ask away!”

“Your song, Murder Eyes. It’s… That’s… Well, you can see...?”

Misa smiles again but this time it’s different. She smiles like she’s laughing at an inside joke with herself.

“Cause I really, um, relate to it. The song.”

He’s dropping hints that he’s the same as her and begging her to answer. It’s not even a question he’s asked, he realizes later, he just stammered at her and waited for something, anything.

Her eyes dart up above his head and then back to his face again and his throat ties itself into knots.

“I’m glad you like it,” she says. “It’s very personal to me, too. I mean, you have to give up so much for… This.” She waves her hand in the air, a vague gesture.

“Yeah!” Beyond cries. He hadn’t thought of it that way before, but he _ had _ had to give things up. People understanding him, peace of mind, a sense of normalcy, fitting in. Well, maybe fitting in isn’t the best way to say it, he’s never cared to _ fit in _, he thinks, but he has wanted to not feel like a freak. That’d be nice, that’s all he wants, he thinks. He’s in high school for pete’s sake, that’s what everyone seems to want. “I agree,” he adds awkwardly. “You know, I never met anyone else who. You know.”

“Hmm, let’s not talk here,” Misa says. She looks around herself and then smiles at him and taps the side of her head with one finger. “It’s sensitive stuff.”

“Oh, of course!” Beyond exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, of course.” His fingers tighten around the straps of his backpack hanging off his shoulders and when Misa sees this, she reaches up with her free hand and takes one of his, a gesture that makes the whole conversation somehow more somber. His heart loses consciousness on the floor of his chest.

“You’re going to be at my concert, right?” Misa asks, squeezing Beyond’s hand and looking into his eyes. What, is he supposed to tell her his plan to sneak in? Yikes.

“I-” Beyond says. “I can’t, the tickets were too much for me.”

“Pfft,” Misa says and she lets go of his hand long enough to dig around in her purse. She pulls out one ticket and presses it into his palm. “Just promise me you’ll be there. And you’ll meet me backstage afterwards.”

“Of course,” Beyond says. “Yeah, I will, I will, I mean-yes.” It occurs to Beyond then that it could be that Misa knows more about this whole eye situation than he does. That maybe, she’s seen numbers change. That maybe she knows, _ really _ knows how to save Able.

Misa smiles big at him again.

“I can’t wait!!” She says. “We have so much to talk about!! I’ll see you then!!” She leans in then and Beyond thinks she’s going to say something about his eyes, but instead, she says, “And, by the way, your makeup is _ so _ cute.”

And then she leaves him standing there in the mall, left to try to remember who he was before Misa Misa held his hand.

image: wammy’s security cameras- a dark hallway of doors at 3am, dec 1

image: beyond comes out of one of the doors

image: wammys security cameras- the front door

image: beyond slips out

image: wammys security cameras- roger’s office, 7am, dec 1. Roger’s working

image: the window behind him slides open. A figure crawls in and roger turns around

image: the figure, in all black, raises a heavy knife above their head

image: the camera pulls out to show the screens the images are on

image: able’s watching them with a frown on their face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!!  
don't forget to bookmark, subscribe, and let me know what you thought of this chapter!!
> 
> 40 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN


	3. eight hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way to the concert, Beyond encounters more strange things and bad omens and he thinks about narrowly avoiding death.

Beyond is so desperate in begging Able to join him at the concert that when Able gives in on That Day, Beyond feels a weight of fear lifted off his chest.

Everything is going perfect, _ more _ than perfect!! He’s met Misa Misa, they hit it off great, he has backstage tickets to talk to her about his eyes, _ and _ to top it all off, going to the concert could save Able. It’s everything he’s ever wanted and more, it’s like a literal dream come true!! Maybe, he thinks with his heart so full he could cry. Maybe this is where my life looks up. Finally.

(Of course, the night is still ahead of them and anything could go wrong. But Beyond is going to make sure it doesn’t.)

Able’s numbers haven’t changed just yet as they sneak out into the street, but Beyond has faith that they will. After all, everyone at _ Wammy’s _ is dying and Able is leaving Wammy’s now. And Beyond will be with them the entire night to protect them. This will go well.

They make it through the looming metal prison gate before it shuts for the night and Beyond actually has to run a little to make it. It clips his backpack as it snaps shut and he has to yank it out from between the tight bars.

They walk together on the street towards after their uber drops them off in the city and everything is weirdly quiet except for their occasional, comfortable conversation and the clatter of the rock Able’s kicking along the sidewalk. Less people are out than usual and all they can hear is far away traffic, muffled by distance.

That’s when a car comes around the corner ahead of them. It’s speeding. This is fine until Beyond realizes there’s a bird sitting in the street.

Birds never seem to move until the last possible second so Beyond’s not really worried until that second comes and then he sucks in a breath to yell at the bird to go, as if that would help. Time seems to stop for a second and the bird stares into Beyond’s eyes.

image: bird eyes

image: beyond's eyes

image: the bird winks

image: beyond's eyes widen in surprise

And then it disappears under the car tire and the car is gone.

Beyond stops on the sidewalk, his mouth open in shock at what he just saw.

Able takes a few more steps and comes back.

“What?” They say.

“That bird just got hit,” Beyond says. He can’t seem to take his eyes away from the grotesque remains. In his mind, he keeps seeing the bird winking at him as the tire goes over it’s little body and he sees it over and over and over. It _ winked _ at him.

Able follows his gaze into the street and then pulls his elbow to yank him away.

“That’s real sad,” they say. “Pity.”

“Birds always fly away, why did this one not go?!”

“I don’t know, Bee, what, do you wanna give it a little bird funeral, huh??”

Ah Able, always the bleeding heart.

“No,” Beyond pouts, a little hurt. “I just. It-it winked at me.”

“Come on,” Able pulls on his arm harder and he stumbles a little after them. “I’m sure winking at dead birds is bad luck somehow-leave it alone.”

He doesn’t need any bad luck tonight, so he does.

image: misa walks on stage, waving. She’s wearing her tour outfit. Her backup singers wear plain masks with glowing eyeholes in the shape of hearts

image: the crowd goes wild

image: beyond is screaming and smiling and Able’s waving a little ‘misa misa’ flag

image: misa performs, screaming. behind her, the wall says 'obsession tour'

An hour into the concert, Misa steps to the front of the stage again and coughs into the microphone. She thanks everyone for coming and brushes hair off her face.

“I’d like to say something,” Misa says and she sounds quieter now and there’s something funny in her voice. “Kira means the world to me, you guys know that. He’s always been there for me, even when no one else was. When my parents died, he brought justice to their murderer. When I was nearly killed, he saved my life. After my parents were first killed, I-” She stops now and Beyond realizes that she’s getting choked up. She starts again. “I was all alone. Everyone in the world had left me, no one even cared that the person who’d ruined my life was still out there. I felt abandoned, I felt unsafe. And then Kira came from out of nowhere and saved me and I realized, even if I had no one, I had Kira.

“And now, my boyfriend Light is-” She chokes up again and coughs and tries again. “Light is dead. And I’m waiting for Kira to avenge him, too. So this, this song goes to Kira. And to Light.” She collects herself and then throws up one hand to signal the rest of the band and they begin to play another song.

It’s Beyond’s favorite, Murder Eyes. What a weird choice to dedicate to her dead boyfriend, he thinks as he screams the lyrics along with the rest of the crowd. He also thinks about Kira. The mysterious person who killed L-and then just as mysteriously disappeared after him. Beyond isn’t necessarily supposed to know these things, but he can put two and two together-especially since he’d been so close to the running for L. When Near and Mello accepted, he knew the original L had to be gone (and good riddance, too). He knew Kira had killed him. He was sort of grateful for the whole thing because if it had gone on any longer, he thought Kira might have found a way to find _ his _ old files-and then Beyond would be a goner.

He reaches over at one point while Misa is singing and grabs Able’s hand, something he doesn’t do very often, and Able’s a little surprised, but they don’t let go. They hold hands for almost the rest of the night and Beyond forgets about numbers scratched on desks and birds under tires and Kira.

image: a and b hold hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 35 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!


	4. five hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the concert, Beyond searches for Misa and begs her for answers.

Backstage is dark. 

Beyond’s used some money he stole from Roger’s desk to get a souvenir jacket, which is a weird souvenir according to Able, but if Misa Misa’s selling it, Beyond will buy it. Able also tells him, only halfway seriously, that he should feel bad for stealing a dead dude’s money, but it’s not like he’s going to use it!! And, Beyond thinks to himself, Roger owes him a few favors anyway. He’s already got the jacket on and in the darkness backstage now, Beyond holds the seam of it in one hand and rubs his thumb against the fabric. Able’s still holding the other hand tight and they wander backstage and wonder where they’re supposed to be.

Able’s numbers still haven’t changed. The light’s so dim now that Beyond can’t see their face well enough to tell, but when they climbed onstage after the performance and disappeared behind the curtains and the dark red lights repainted every angle of their face, it had been the same then. So he thinks it’s the same now. But he has hope. After all, he’s got every precaution in the world in his backpack and he’s not going to let them out of his sight.

As of now, they’re destined to die at five am tonight. It’s midnight now. He’s been refusing to think of ‘last’ anything. This isn’t their last night and this isn’t Able’s last summer and this isn’t their last conversation. Because he’s going to fix it. This way, he’s been compartmentalizing his panic. He’s been shutting it off the way one might tie a knot in a garden hose that’s going full blast.

He squeezes their hand.

They wander around a little longer in the dark.

image: darkness, some curtains

image: curtains shuffle

image: face jumps out in glowing mask with a knife

“Ahh!!” The person screams.

“Ahh!!” Beyond and Able scream back and then Able punches them in the face. 

In the chaos as the person falls back and sputters, dropping their knife, Beyond is proud of his best friend’s violent instincts.

Able jumps forward, still on alert, squeezing Beyond’s fingers so tight his bones strain, and swings out a foot to kick them in the gut.

“Wait!” The person cries and scrambles back, missing Able’s sneaker by an inch. They tear off the glowing mask. “Hang on, I’m sorry!!”

It’s one of Misa’s backup dancers. A red welt is growing on her cheek where Able’s fist connected with her face. 

“Don’t kick me!!” She cries, angry. “It was just a joke!! Damn!!”

She climbs to her feet.

“I could sue, you know,” she says bitterly. “You’re not even supposed to be back here.”

“Yes we are,” Beyond says. “Misa invited us. And besides, you had a knife.”

“It was  _ obviously _ a prop, stupid,” she grumbles and kicks the rubber knife across the dark stage floor. It’s so dark he can still hardly make out anything and it puts him on edge. His heart is still racing from the jumpscare moments before.

“We’re lost,” Able says but they don’t say it in an apologetic way. They say it in a way that makes Beyond imagine they’re the bad cop, shining a light in her eyes in an interrogation room, a few minutes away from making thinly veiled threats about kneecaps. They’re still gripping Beyond’s hand too hard. “Where’s Misa’s room?”

“I can’t tell you that,” the girl says.

“Then I guess I can’t stop my foot the next time it wants to find your gut, dumbass.”

The girl glares and then finally, she points into the darkness.

“You guys can’t take a joke,” she says and Able and Beyond continue into the darkness.

Beyond has conflicted feelings about the dark because it’s of course a little frightening. But when the lights are off and he can hold Able’s hand and not see their face and avoid thinking about the countdown on their life, well… That’s good shit.

Now, however, he feels something ominous. He feels like the darkness is closing in, like something’s breathing down his neck. 

He remembers the bird in the street again.

When they finally reach the door, Able lets go of Beyond’s hand to knock, releasing him from their tense grip. He thinks it’ll take some time, but Misa opens the door almost immediately and light floods into the hall and blinds him.

“Beyond!” She exclaims.

“Excuse me?” Says Able, who is very aware of the ‘no real names’ rule.

“Misa!” Says Beyond, who has thought this moment through very carefully and has decided they’re past formalities now.

Misa ushers them both inside and Beyond’s eyes adjust to the light.

Misa’s room is more plain than he would have imagined. He thought music stars had big, decorated, lavish changing rooms with elaborate designs and mood lighting and stupid, extravagant things like fish tanks. This room is almost exactly the opposite. It’s small and the walls are plain and ugly. A rack of outfits hangs in one corner and a plain, beige counter sits under an ordinary mirror. Dirty make-up kits are scattered across the counter and a metal folding chair has been pulled up to it. A skinny fan hangs from the ceiling. The floor is concrete.

Misa has clearly begun the process of undoing the concert damage. Most of the make up is off her face, even though traces of black eyeliner are still smeared under one eye and black lipstick has sort of stained her lips. Her hair is in a messy ponytail at the nape of her neck, sweaty now from hot lights and although she’s still wearing her ripped, black skinny jeans, she’s got an old, oversized Misa Misa shirt on top, faded and stained. He’s never seen her in such a state of disarray-not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just unusual. He realizes that he’s been seeing pristine and polished Misa Misa this whole time, which only makes sense of course, but doesn’t hit him until he’s confronted with normal, human Misa-not just a goth rockstar goddess, but also a person.

“I’m so glad you came!!” She cries and she really does look it. She rummages around now behind the rack of outfits and brings out two more metal folding chairs. Beyond and Able arrange themselves and Misa flops down in front of them both in her own chair. Her eyes linger on Able and their numbers but her thoughts don’t manifest on her face. Beyond knows that trick-it’s one he’s had to master himself. Surely she’s wondering what he’s thinking now.

“You were great,” Beyond gushes instead. “The concert was incredible.”

Misa grins.

“Aww, you think so?” She says. “Thank you!! I gotta say, it tuckered me out. I’m  _ so _ tired now!!” She stretches up her arms and yawns as if on cue. She's so cute, Beyond could die on the spot.

“This is Able,” Beyond says quickly and gestures towards Able and then remembers her eyes. “Well, I mean Ashley. Er, I mean, Able.”

Able gives him an angry, bewildered look, like he’d just insulted somebody’s mother-an element of ‘you’re embarrassing me’ tied up with a ‘what the hell is wrong with you’.

“My name is Able,” they insist now to Misa.

Misa smiles.

“Able,” she says. “ _ So  _ nice to meet you!! I had been wondering,” she continues. She sounds a little far off, distant, like she’s somewhere else. “Who you, you know, made the deal  _ for _ . Because I got to thinking and I think most people wouldn’t just take it for themselves-they’d do it for someone else in one way or another. But now I know who.” She smiles at Able, almost distractedly. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She reaches forward and takes Able’s hand in both of hers.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Able says. “What deal?”

That’s what Beyond wants to know, too. Deal?? Maybe she’s talking about something metaphorically and he’s just on the wrong page. She  _ does _ sound kind of tired after all, kind of dreamy.

Misa’s face falls and she looks over at Beyond.

“Um,” Beyond says and he’s usually pretty quick to think on his feet, but right now, he can’t. What deal can he tell Able? He doesn’t even know what he’s covering for in the first place.

“We can speak bluntly here,” Misa says. “There’s no cameras, nothing. I promise.”

“I want to ask if you know how to change the numbers,” Beyond says instead of explaining, the words uncontrollable.

Misa looks at him, miserable. She sits back in her chair and lets Able’s hands slip from hers.

“I don’t,” she says.

“Are you two talking in code,” Able grumbles. “Real funny.”

Beyond has always wanted to tell Able about his eyes. But of course, he’s afraid. How can he tell them they would die so soon?? He didn’t have the strength to have that conversation with them, not to mention all the conversations that would come after about how he has a screw loose and how he should see somebody. He gets that from everyone, he doesn’t want to get it from Able, too.

(For the record, he knows he probably  _ should _ see somebody, just in general. But that has less to do with his eyes and more to do with Wammy’s toxicity.)

He thinks that after tonight he’ll tell them. Once he saved them, he’ll stop and sit them down and tell them the biggest secret of his life. After all these years there is this sadness in him. He feels like he’s been holding something back from his best friend. There are comments he can’t make to them, thoughts he can’t share, experiences he can’t ask for help with, because they don’t know. He can prove it to them eventually and then he won’t have to be the only one with such a gargantuan secret and he won’t be alone.

But he can’t tell them until after tonight, until after they’re safe. That’s the deal, he thinks to himself. 

He thinks of the tumbleweed he imagined from before, the tumbleweed between them as cowboys in a standoff and he thinks maybe it’s not a tumbleweed after all, it’s a great cavern. Able is always looking at him from across some giant hole in the ground and after tonight, he’ll finally be able to close it and meet them on the other side.

“Do you want to talk in private?” Misa asks Beyond and she looks a little bewildered. He supposes in having brought Able, Misa assumed they knew everything, and maybe they should. When he imagined this all in his head earlier, he hadn’t known what to do with Able-all he knew was that he wanted them there. He would just have to talk over their confusion. They’d understand soon enough anyway.

“No,” Beyond says. “I mean, I want Able with me.”

“What is  _ happening _ ?” Able insists. “I thought we were gonna, like, talk about music or something.”

“Well surely you brought your note with you,” Misa continues. “I don’t have mine, they took it.”

Beyond’s gotta admit, there’s a lot of confusion in this room and although he’s not the most confused, he’s certainly not the least either.

“Note?” He says. “Like… A doctor’s note?”

“The book,” Misa says desperately.

“Book??” Beyond says.

Able leans over their knees and puts their chin in their hands, bored and angry with being left out.

Misa stares at Beyond.

“You have to have a book,” she says.

“I mean, I have like, a book collection at home…” 

“Then how did you get the eyes??”

“I’ve had my eyes since I was born?!”

“You mean to tell me you’ve seen this stuff-” she gestures to the tops of their heads. “Since… Since  _ birth _ ?”

Able’s scrolling through their phone and occasionally glaring. Beyond ignores them.

“Have you not?” Beyond breathes.

“No, I made a trade,” she says. “With a… Well. I made a trade.”

“What book are you talking about?” Beyond says. “What trade??”

“Look,” Misa says. “Clearly you’re, I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re different somehow. I didn’t even know people could just have the eyes like that.” She studies his face and then harrumphs and sits back in her chair, her arms crossed. “Light would know,” she says. “Light would do something clever with this information.”

He thinks the crashing feeling inside him is his heart being broken.

“Wait, if you have a book on this stuff, if you tell me the whole story, maybe I’ll understand more what I’m seeing. I never met anyone like me before, you know? And I just, I want to change the numbers.”

He glances over at Able. Misa does, too. Able looks up, feeling eyes on their face, and shrugs at both of them, irritated.

“I’m just going to play Plague Inc until someone explains to me what the hell the both of you are talking about.”

“I don’t think you can exactly,” Misa says to Beyond. “Change them.”

“I have to,” Beyond says.

Misa looks at him and hugs herself and looks down at the dirty concrete beneath them.

“I understand,” she says. “You know I understand, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Beyond says awkwardly.

“I wish I could help you,” she says.

“You can,” Beyond insists. “Explain to me what you’re talking about. I’ve never had any sort of, any  _ context _ , there’s things about this that you know that I don’t, just tell-”

“No, no,” Misa says and then she stands up. “No, I can’t.”

He looks up at her from where he’s still sitting. Able looks up, too.

Finally, Beyond stands.

“I  _ have _ to change this,” he says and he’s angry and pleading and desperate. “And you’re the only one with any sort of clue. If this happens… Then I’d rather be dead, too.”

Misa looks at him and then looks down at the concrete.

“It’s true,” she whispers. “Your life will be utterly shattered. And I’m sorry.” 

Beyond thinks of the way she talked about her dead boyfriend on stage. He thinks he feels sick.

Able stands now too, bewildered and angry.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” they say. “But if you’ve got something Bee wants, I suggest you give it to him.” They fold their arms across their chest. This is almost certainly a line they’ve heard in some old gangster movie and Able always  _ looks _ sweeter than they are, but Beyond is sure he’d still be intimidated if he were to be on the receiving end of their display.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Misa says and then she pushes past them and opens the door and disappears into the darkness and Able and Beyond are left alone in her dressing room.

“No, what, come back!!” Beyond’s shouting almost angrily and he follows her a few feet into the darkness before he realizes that she’s gone. “Come  _ back _ , I need your help!!”

When he turns around, Able is still waiting in the dressing room and they grab him and pull him inside.

“What?” Beyond says.

“What’s going on,” they demand. “What  _ deals _ , what sort of trouble have you gotten into??”

“I didn’t get into any trouble,” Beyond says. ‘“It’s, it’s complicated to explain.”

“I got all night,” Able growls.

No, you don’t, Beyond thinks and his heart twinges and he thinks he’ll throw up.

“Let’s go,” he says dejectedly. “Go… Somewhere. We were gonna get something to eat-” He starts to walk out the door too, but Able grabs him and hauls him back over.

“You’re going to tell me what sort of stupid mistake you made to get wrapped up in, what, trades and books or something.”

“I didn’t do anything! I can’t, I can’t explain…”

Able leans over and shuts the dressing room door with their free hand and then turns to look up at Beyond. Their face is hard.

“No cameras in here,” they say. “No mics. Just you, me, and some concrete walls.”

“Um,” Beyond says.

“So if you say anything in here, it stays in here. Are you following me.”

“I guess.”

Able studies him and lets out a breath. They look down at their fingers, wrapped tightly around his wrist. They wet their lips.

“Did you…” Able starts and then they look up into his face, their eyes wide and serious behind their oversized blue glasses. Their words trail off. “Did you…” Kill Roger. Did you kill Roger, was what his best friend in the whole world was asking him. 

“Fuck no!” Beyond exclaims and he tries to yank his wrist away from Able, but they tighten their iron grip and drag him closer. “Why would you even ask that?”

“You know why I’m asking,” Able replies in a second. They’re studying his face intensely.

Beyond swallows. He knows why.

“Also, you weren’t in bed the morning of. I had to find you.”

“I went to dance practice earlier than usual.”

“The tapes show you leaving our bedroom at 3am. Then you’re gone. Then someone sneaks in the window at 7am and kills Roger and leaves. And I find you at  _ dance practice _ at 7:45, you who usually sleeps in until 10-”

“Able-” Beyond pleads.

“I gotta know so I can protect you, we can come up with some sort of plan-”

“Able!” Beyond cries again. “Stop!!”

It’s nice to know that if he  _ did _ confess to cold-blooded murder right here and now, his best friend would be prepared to cover for him. Sometime’s Able’s a wildcard. Sometimes they fuck him over just to have someone to fuck over. Beyond wasn’t entirely sure whether or not they’d turn on him, as much as he hates to admit this to himself. But at least now he knows they’re ride or die where it counts.

Able stops when Beyond raises his voice. They’re still making that intense eye contact that makes Beyond’s skin squirm.

“Do you have an alibi.”

“No.”

“Where were you.”

“Just… Walking.”

“Just walking?! And you told no one where you were.”

“Well I’m sorry, next time I go for a walk, I’ll make sure to take a tracker.” 

image: beyond’s finally manages to rip his wrist away from able

“I didn’t  _ know _ someone was gonna off the dude! This wouldn’t have been suspicious any other day, I just went walking!”

“Who goes for walks at 3am?!”

“Me!!”

Beyond was telling the truth, of course. He  _ did _ just go walking.

“I wandered around for a few hours and then I went to the dance studio at like, 6-ish, I think, but I didn’t turn on any music until 7-ish, when you walked in!”

“Then what were you doing in there?”

“I dunno, sitting around? Warming up? You have to warm up before you dance, you know.”

The more he talks, the more flimsy his story becomes. But it’s  _ true _ , he’s telling the truth!!

It’s just that no one will believe him. Because of what they know about him.

Able doesn’t even seem sure they believe him, but finally they drop their eyes and heave a breath. They reach up and unclip their hair and start fiddling with the barette.

“Fine,” they say and they turn. He can hear the clip in their fingers. Snap, flick. Snap, flick. Snap, flick. “The cops haven’t gotten the tapes yet because, you know, Wammy’s is all secretive. But they will and we better find out who actually did it before then because as soon as they see what I saw, you’ll be on death row in a heartbeat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 31 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!


	5. five hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond and Able find a terrible surprise and all of a sudden, it begins.

He wouldn’t be on death row because they can’t put minors on death row. He knows. He’s double checked. 

What he _ would _ be is life in prison, which doesn’t sound like much fun either. 

Able wants to go home. It’s three am now. There’s still two hours left on the clock and the more time passes, the more Beyond’s stomach does flips. For just two more hours, he has to keep them away from Wammy’s. That’s why they’re out here in the first place, after all. He just has to convince them to stay away. He thought it’d be easy to convince them. They'd talked about getting food, bumming around town in the dark, spray painting a wall, all normal for them. He was positive they'd stay out all night, like they had a hundred times. That was what made this whole plan work.

But he can’t convince them. Of course he can’t. Because Able is stubborn and now they're angry and tired after the argument at the concert and they just want to go to bed.

On the walk back to Wammy’s, Beyond very seriously considers hitting Able over the head and dragging them into an alleyway to spend the night where whatever’s going on at Wammy’s right now won’t affect them. But he knows he couldn’t win against Able in a fight, there’s no way, and if he attacks someone now, especially the only person in the world who’s on his side, he’ll just be _ handing _ everyone reasons to think he killed Roger.

If he hits them over the head and wins and they _ die? _Everyone will think he killed Roger.

If he tells Able the truth, they won’t believe him. In fact, they’ll think he’s crazy and they’ll tell someone out of concern for him and they’ll also think he’s crazy and then everyone will think he killed Roger.

This is ridiculous. He can’t win.

So what if people think he killed Roger but Able stays alive? So he goes to prison for the rest of his life, but at least Able’s alive, right? Except he’d totally get killed in prison. He’s seen documentaries about prison, he wouldn’t last a day. He’s clever and he’ll even admit he’s ruthless, but he’s not tough. He’d be a bloodstain on the ground by day two, three tops. So he’s afraid.

He frets about this all the way back to Wammy’s and before they make the final turn, in a fit of desperation, he grabs Able and stops them and pulls them closer to him.

“You’re being weird tonight,” Able says and they sound… Concerned. Scared. Scared of him or scared for him, he doesn’t know.

“Able,” Beyond chokes and all these thoughts spin around in his head like a merry-go-round from hell and all he can manage to spit out is a weak, “I’d die in prison.”

Able stares at him and laughs uncomfortably.

“Uh,” they say. “Yeah, that’s why you’re not _ going _ to prison. You sure there’s nothing you, you know, wanna tell me?”

Beyond looks up at the numbers above their head and his throat closes and he grabs their hand and shakes his head.

“Please,” he says, his voice almost a whisper. “Please don’t go back in. Please.”

He can see the fight in Able’s eyes between trusting Beyond and between proving that they’re tough and can’t be told what to do and he knows it’s a losing battle.

They take their hand away from him and scowl.

“You’re being dumb,” they say. “And you won’t even tell me what’s going on with you lately. I’m going to go lay down in my bed and if you want to stay out here all night and do, I dunno, whatever it is you’ve been doing, going on 3am walks, fine by me.” They glare up at him and then they turn around and keep walking.

And what can Beyond do except follow behind them?

He’s brainstorming frantically by the time they re-enter the building. He’s trying to think of something to get Able to leave and think it’s their idea but the panic is strangling his brain. 

He’s thinking through the logistics of faking a bomb threat as they walk through the dark hall to their bedroom when Able stops. Beyond runs into them and Able stumbles a little.

“What’s wrong?” Beyond whispers.

The hall is very dark and quiet. They’re trying to sneak back into their bedroom unnoticed after all.

Able’s quiet for a minute and then they point.

image: under a door is a dark smear

Beyond stops and stares too.

“So someone spilled something,” he whispers. “Big deal.”

“It’s not a spill,” Able breathes back and Beyond looks back and realizes it looks sort of… Red. 

Shit, he thinks. Shit, fuck, shit, damn, fuck, fucking shit.

He’s wrapped his hands around Able’s upper arm and is pulling them now.

“Let’s go,” he says desperately. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go-”

Instead, Able pulls away and they walk forward and push open the door.

image: Mrs Carver is dead on the other side of the room. There’s blood everywhere. Her throat’s been slit.r

image: able and beyond stand in the doorway and stare, horrified

Able slams the door hard and stumbles back.

The sound is loud and Beyond wants to throw up. Someone’s here, someone killed Mrs Carver, and Able just told them right where they were.

He grabs Able and drags them down the hall the rest of the way to their room in a frenzied panic.

Maybe it would have been smarter for him to grab them and turn around and head back for the front door, but it’s a long ways away now and down flights of stairs and past doors and corners and in a split second, he thinks the safest thing is to hide behind their bedroom door, get under their bunkbed and cry until morning comes.

Now he thinks he was dumb to dismiss Roger’s murder as a one-time thing because it must have been the start of something. Maybe I’m in a horror movie, he thinks.

In the room, Able and Beyond stumble over each other in an attempt to get the door closed. When they do, Able grabs Beyond and shakes him.

“You know something!!” They hiss. “You told me not to come in, what’s going on!!”

“I don’t know,” Beyond pleads and his voice wobbles involuntarily and his eyes get watery. He wants to slap himself. Keep it together, he screams in his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know-”

“You’re keeping secrets!” Able says. “Why, why are you keeping secrets from me??”

“It’s not that,” Beyond insists even though it is definitely that.

“You-” Able starts and then there’s a creak-a footstep right outside the door. Able stops talking and they both freeze and Beyond watches out of the corner of his eye as what little color was left in Able’s face drains away.

They watch the door.

Beyond knows Able keeps water guns and stink bombs and fake bugs and shit like that in little hiding spots all over the house and he knows they keep a water gun under the bed at all times and he thinks of it now, but no amount of cold water in a nerf gun will save them here. Able is backing up towards the far wall and they’re starting to shake and they grab Beyond and yank him along with them.

Once they’re on the other side of the room, they freeze there and Able’s clammy hand finds Beyond’s.

It’s silent.

Then with a bang, the door bursts open and standing there is a person. In the dark, all they can see is a dark outline and red, glowing eyes. They take a step into the room and light from the window illuminates them. Beyond’s eyes widen. The person is wearing the hood and glowing mask of Misa’s background dancers from the concert and in their hand is a huge, bloody knife. They’re splattered in red, from their hands to their clothes.

The killer stares at Beyond and Able and they stare back, paralyzed. Next to him, Able shakes so hard that their breath comes out choked.

The person studies them for another second and then, to Beyond’s shock, they turn around casually and walk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 28 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!!


	6. four and a half hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond and Able linger on some bad memories.

“Hello?? Mello?? Hello?? Mello, pick up the phone! Mello!!” 

Beyond’s hissing into his third voicemail while Able ties their bedsheets together to make a way to escape out the window. Mello’s still not picking up, even though Beyond has everyone’s death dates memorized down to the minute and according to his photographic memory, Mello’s still alive and kicking. He’s just also screening his calls is all.

Matt and Near are alive, too. Are they asleep? Are they hurt? Do they  _ know _ ?

Behind all this, the image of the killer is burned into Beyond’s mind. Of course, they looked like… But that’s ridiculous! He pushes the thought aside. It can’t be her, that’s… Laughable. Right??

Able’s fussing with a knot that they can’t seem to remember to tie right and finally they throw it down and let out a strangled sob.

“Fuck!!” They cry as loudly as a scared whisper will let them. “This isn’t like the movies! I can’t  _ do _ this!!”

“It’s okay!” Beyond says automatically, even though it’s never been less okay.

“Did the police say they’d be fast?” Able asks desperately. Beyond’s mind blanks for a second. 

“Uh,” he says.

“You didn’t call the police?!” Able hisses. 

They both explode into a frenzied, whispered argument, talking over each other in a panic.

“Hold on, I’ll do it right now-”

“You’re so stupid, why didn’t you call the  _ police _ -”

“I’m trying to see if everyone’s okay, it’s been a stressful fucking night-”

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, call the damn police right now or I swear-”

A scream interrupts their argument. It’s a man, just close enough to send nausea straight to the pit of Beyond’s stomach. (He doesn’t want to be here, he wanted to be gone, he told Able, he told them, no one listened!! He’d thought maybe it’d be something boring like a carbon monoxide leak or something, but of course, if the world could find a way to screw over Beyond Birthday, it would take that opportunity. It’s shocking considering his consistently abysmal luck how he hasn’t started factoring it into his life choices yet.)

He thinks through the numbers in his head quick. It’s Mr Wammy, here for the funeral that still hasn’t happened yet. 

He calls the police.

As he’s talking, Able gives up on tying knots and throws the tangle of blankets across the room in anger.

The operator tells Beyond to stay on the phone after he describes what’s going on and tells them both to hide, but as soon as they finish talking, Able takes the phone from Beyond and hangs up.

“Hey!” Beyond cries.

“What we have to do is get  _ out _ ,” Able hisses. “And the window’s not an option.”

“You wanna go through? Like through the house?”

“You got a better plan, smartass?”

He does not.

They walk through the halls back to back as carefully as possible. Beyond holds the scissors from his backpack in front of him as a weapon and Able holds his knife. He’s gone first and Able had hesitated in agreeing to this but hadn’t argued.

The house is quiet. All Beyond can hear is his and Able’s breathing and their tip-toeing footsteps.

That’s when ahead of him, Beyond sees the light go on under one of the doors. He freezes and Able backs into him and they stumble a little.

He holds his breath.

At the same time around the corner, a kid steps out, looking groggy and confused. She’s not much younger than Able and Beyond and she’s got  _ seconds _ on the clock above her head. Beyond’s stomach lurches.

“What’s going on,” she says tiredly. “I’ve heard yelling but I can’t find anyone.”

“Go,” Beyond whispers to her frantically. “Run!!”

“What?” The girl says.

Then, the door with the light busts open and the killer steps out, the mask still fixed firmly on their face, wiping blood off their hands and onto their pants.

Beyond jumps back and the girl turns, her eyes wide.

“What??” She says again.

Then, again, the killer looks at her and back at Beyond and Able-and goes for the girl.

She screams as the killer falls on her and then there’s a knife in her throat and Beyond realizes he’s screaming and Able’s dragging him, his legs are jello, they’re running past, Beyond can’t catch his breath.

They reach the bottom floor and Able’s heading to the front door, his hand in theirs, when the killer runs ahead and jumps in front of the door. They point their knife and Able staggers back.

“W-we called the p-police,” they stammer.

Beyond is reminded of how much this person looks like… Except that just doesn’t make  _ sense _ .

The killer runs at them.

Beyond and Able whirl around and book it.

They run down halls until they pass Roger’s office- at which time, Able skids to a stop and rummages around their pockets frantically.

“Let's go!” Beyond cries and then Able produces a key-the one they took from Mrs. Carver. They jam it into the lock in Roger's door and jerk it back and forth until the door swings open. The killer is rounding the corner, knife in hand. Able shoves Beyond inside and joins him and slams the door behind them. The killer is pounding and pushing and Able holds the door steady as best they can as Beyond tries to fit the key in the lock.

The killer pounds and the door shakes.

“Hurry!” Able cries. The key slips in Beyond’s sweaty fingers and he almost sobs until finally, he gets it in the lock and the door clicks.

The other side of the door goes quiet. Able and Beyond fall back a little and then the killer slaps the door with both hands and then loudly walks away.

They are left alone in the locked room.

Able stumbles back, looking for something to hold on to, and finally finds the corner of Roger’s desk. They collapse onto it, trembling.

“What’s-” they choke and then they heave another breath and try again. “What’s happening.”

Beyond leans up against a wall and then finds he only has the strength to slide down it and hit the floor, the adrenaline leaving him. He lets his backpack slip off his shoulders and slump next to him. His throat is closing a little-childhood asthma back with a vengeance.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Why didn’t they kill us right off the bat,” Able says.

“I don’t know.”

“Who is that.”

“I don’t know.”

Able leans back onto the desk, propped up by their hands behind them, their head hanging back tiredly. Beyond thinks about how a few days ago, Roger was there, dead.

As he sits here thinking about him, he’s bombarded with the worst memory he has of this room.

He’s called into Roger’s office a year or so after arriving at Wammy’s. He’s been doing great, more than great-his grades are top notch. He’s one of the cleverest kids in the whole children’s home and he’s starting to feel really proud of that. He’s never had that much to be proud of in his life. He’s starting to think… He could be the next L, if he really puts his heart into it.

That’s when Roger calls him in and sits him down in front of that same desk.

“Backup,” he says wearily, because everything he does, he does wearily. He didn’t have a knife in his head then, but Beyond almosts pictured him with one. 

image: living roger speaking over the desk w a knife in his head

“We’re all very proud of your progress. But I need you to know right now, even if you are the very top of the leaderboards, you will never be picked to be L.”

Beyond stares. He’s fourteen.

“Why?” He breathes. “I’m doing good. What am I doing wrong??”

“It’s-” Roger starts and Beyond instantly knows. “It’s… You know. Your… Record. That complicates things. That and your behavior here-”

“I’ll be better!!” Beyond insists. “I can, I can be more obedient!! I’ll listen more! I won’t get into trouble, I’ll-”

“Backup, this isn’t a punishment,” Roger says. “I’m just telling you, so you don’t get your hopes up. You’ll never be L. Your past makes you compromisable. Your temperament is too violent, too competitive. You would tarnish L’s legacy. Mr. Wammy will never agree to letting you replace him. You’re… Too much.”

Beyond sits there and feels like absolute shit. Where he’s sitting now on the floor, he looks at that desk and the chairs in front of it and can see his younger self sitting there, heart breaking.

“Then why am I here,” Beyond says in a small voice.

Roger nods his head and in this new memory/daydream combo, blood surges out of the wound in the front of his head and rolls down his face. It drips onto the papers on the desk loudly.

“You fit the profile of what we’re looking for in everything except that,” he says and shrugs. “And… Mr. Wammy is a good man.”

So that’s it? He’s here out of, what, this old dudes pity?? His  _ charity _ ? 

He’s sent out of Roger’s office pretty soon after this and spends the rest of the day in a sort of disoriented disbelief. The shock dissolves eventually into rage and then sadness and then, bitter, seething acceptance. Because what else  _ can _ he do other than just… Take it?

Will this stupid incident in the past follow him around his entire life? Can he ever escape??

Now, he presses the back of his head against the wall and heaves a breath. 

“I hate Roger,” he mutters, as if the guy’s still alive. It’s really more a ‘shoot the messenger’ situation, though. He doesn’t hate Roger, not really. He hates him for being the bearer of bad news-the news being that Beyond isn’t good enough, and never can be good enough. That he’s a charity case and barely tolerable and no matter what he does, he can’t escape the past. It’s his fate now, and it was decided a long time ago who he would be.

“What?” Able says.

“Nothing,” Beyond says. Then, he adds, “Did they… I mean… Did they tell you-... Able, you should have been L.”

Able’s face goes hard. Fast.

“There’s a dude with a knife out there slicing throats out and you want to talk about L??”

“I just want to know-”

“What, huh? What do you want to know? Asshole.”

“ _ You’re _ an asshole.”

“No, you are.”

“Shut up!”

“You!!”

“They told you you couldn’t be L, huh!” Beyond finally spits it out, tense with anger. “You’re not good enough!!”

Able looks full of rage. They sputter for a minute, which means it’s true.

Beyond’s shoulder’s sink and he leans his head back up against the wall.

“They pulled you in here and sat you down right in that chair, huh,” he keeps going and his voice lowers with sadness. “And Roger looked you in the face and told you no one here wanted you.”

Able’s eyes shine with tears for a split second before they blink them away fast.

“Why are you talking about this,” they say in a choked voice. They look away. “You just know because they did the same thing to you, except everyone  _ knows _ they did it to you.”

“I get it, yeah, everyone knows my secrets, I know.”

Able breathes in and looks back.

“Fuck L,” they say. “I don’t want his shitty title anyway.”

“Why’d they tell you no,” Beyond asks. Able shrugs, but not the kind of shrug that says ‘I don’t know’, the weak one that says ‘I know but I don’t really want to share’.

“Didn't like my behavior or whatever. Said I was too… Too… Everything bad that there could be. Too violent and selfish and, like, cruel or whatever. I’m not… Cruel.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m… I’m not bad. I’m not all that stuff.”

“You’re not.”

“So it’s not  _ fair! _ ” They slam their fist down on the table and suck in an angry breath. “It’s not fair!!”

Before they can go on, they’re interrupted. The raps are fast, quiet-someone is knocking on the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 24 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!


	7. three and a half hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Able finally believes Beyond about Roger-but at what cost?

The doorknob rustles and Beyond and Able hold themselves completely still. The knocking returns, fast, light, frantic.

“Open the door,” begs Near from the hallway.

Beyond pulls the key out of his pocket and opens it and Mello and Near come in quickly. Mello’s got another fifteen minutes on him and that’s all. Near doesn’t have that much longer. Beyond heaves a sigh and locks the door behind them and turns around to see them staring at him suspiciously.

Great, he thinks. Here we go again.

Near looks around the room and then looks at Able and says, “The Roger case. Have you made any progress?”

Able’s still fuming. They look away and shrug, surly.

“I mean, we’ve been busy.”

“It’s been two full days.”

“I  _ said _ we were busy, twerp.”

“Are you avoiding putting it together because you want to protect Backup?” 

Able glares. Near’s probably right about that and Beyond’s heart twinges.

“I didn’t do it,” Beyond grumbles for the zillionth time, but he knows it’s useless to say-he’s just going through the motions. No one listens to him anyway.

“There’s some guy out there hunting us all down and we’re talking about Roger?” Able groans.

“Backup knows something about this,” Mello says. He looks back at Beyond. “And the Roger thing had to be related.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Beyond retorts angrily. “But that still doesn’t mean I know anything more than you.”

“Don’t you dig that singer?” Mello says. “The one who’s  _ jacket _ this person is wearing?”

“Lots of people dig her.”

“Not a lot outside of Japan. You’re just a weeb.”

This is a tough night for Beyond.

“It all lines up that you have at least some info on this. You’re probably complicit.”

“He was with me all night!” Able says loudly.

“Your alibi doesn’t mean much, A, I’m sorry,” Near says. “You’d lie for him.”

“I let you in here!” Beyond cries, waving around the key and stepping closer. “I can kick you out!!”

“We need to come up with a plan,” Able says. “To get us out of here.”

“If Backup would tell us the whole story, we could.”

“I don’t have the whole story.”

This goes on for a while, Near and Able going back and forth, Able getting angrier and angrier and Near’s eyes narrowing. Beyond sits it out.

“We called the police,” Able finally says over the conversation, after Beyond’s not sure how much time. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“We called the police too a while ago,” Mello says with a frown. “When we found Carver. It’s been a while, though. I don’t think they’re coming.”

“They legally  _ have _ to come.”

Suddenly, a huge cracking sound shakes the door and wall and Beyond leaps away, snatching his backpack with him.

The cracking sound comes again. It’s an axe against the door. The wood is splintering and fast.

Able is off the desk and at one of the windows and is pulling it open. It’s heavy and they strain as the axe makes it’s way through the door on it’s third swing.

Near goes out the window first and directly into the bush just a foot below. Then Able, then Beyond, and then everything seems to happen in slow motion as the killer bursts through the door and runs at the window.

image: the killer runs with axe in hand

image: the axe comes down

image: it's in mello's head

On the grass behind him, Beyond hears Near let out a shuddering breath as Mello collapses. It’s the saddest little breath he’s ever heard, like Near’s heart was just torn out of his chest. He feels nauseous.

The killer is starting to climb through the window. Beyond’s head throbs. He scrambles to his feet, slings his backpack over his shoulder, and together, he and Able haul Near up and pull him along as they run. 

They make for the front gate but they’d have to get past the gardens in the front first. It’s a longer distance than Beyond wants it to be and if  _ he _ runs slow, somehow Near runs slower. Poor kid’s just in socks, wet now from the mud, and he’s stumbling around like he could fall over any minute. Beyond would have thought that what he saw back there would give him some sort of burst of adrenaline, but it seems to just have turned him into jello. It’s a relatable feeling. He squeezes Near’s hand and pulls him faster.

He thinks he should hear footsteps behind them and heavy breathing, but he doesn’t. He glances behind. The killer isn’t there.

“Come on, come on, Near, Bee, guys,” Able’s begging. “We have to go faster guys, we gotta-”

“I can’t-” Near wheezes. “Go faster!”

When they reach the front of the house it becomes obvious why the killer wasn’t chasing them. They’d gone out the front door and waited there and now they step out from the other side of the house directly in front of Able and Able screams like Beyond’s never heard them scream before and the knife comes down and Able kicks hard. The killer goes sprawling and blood gushes from a slash in Able’s arm. They stumble back, their hand over the cut, and let out a sob. Beyond rushes forward and grabs them and runs.

“Bee, we gotta stop them, Bee, they’re down, I can stop them-”

“No you can’t, they have a knife!”

“We have to stop them!”

Behind the house is the graveyard and Beyond stumbles into it before he even realizes where he is, Able’s wrist in one hand and Near’s wrist in the other.

If he lets go of Near and leaves him behind… Well, like the old adage says, you don’t have to outrun the bear. But before he can decide to leave Near for dead, they’ve already arrived, and he pulls them all behind a particularly tall mausoleum and drops to his knees there. Asthma and the curse of being skinny and out of shape is really starting to catch up with him, but he has no time to catch his breath or settle the nausea in his stomach.

On his hand is Able’s blood. Frantically, he wipes it off on his jacket before he remembers that this was supposed to be a souvenir jacket and he should have kept it nice-except what kind of memory would it be now anyway? Priorities, Beyond, he thinks.

Able finally lets out a quiet, strangled cry and plops down next to him in the dirt and their right side is covered in blood. Beyond tears off his backpack-which he still has because he’s clever, he thinks to himself-and he pulls out his emergency kits. First aid, neosporin, super glue, then gauze.

“Why do you have all this shit??” Able breathes.

“Um, you know, just in case,” Beyond says.

Able and Near’s eyes are boring into him like drills. But it’s not like he could just not use it!! Fuck being suspicious, maybe it looked weird, maybe he’s already on the chopping block here, but he isn’t gonna let Able walk around with their arm in pieces!

“You’re welcome,” he hisses and he closes up his Akazukin Chacha backpack.

(Ugghh all this cool merch he has on him and it’s all just gonna get dirty and probably with blood. Gross. Serial killers really couldn’t be a little more cleanly about this stuff?)

Near is looking around the side of the mausoleum now. His little hands are shaking.

“I thought,” he said. “Me and Mello both thought… Someone might come after us. We just weren’t sure when. We took too long, we thought they might be done after Roger. A revenge thing, because we’re L.”

Suddenly, Near whips back around the side of the mausoleum and presses his back to the stone, his eyes wide.

“What,” Able whispers but they all know. The killer has entered the graveyard.

Beyond listens hard but he can’t hear anything. Not footsteps, not breathing, well, not except for his and Able’s and Near’s. The graveyard is rank with the stench of mud.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his scissors and holds them in front of him.

What side are they on? Able mouths to Near and Near nods to the right hand side-the side Beyond is on.

Beyond prepares himself but his hands are shaking so hard he can hardly hold the scissors straight. It's the adrenaline, the panic. He's sure at least that if the killer comes around the corner, he could put this in their gut. He's not squeamish that way and he wouldn't regret it. He wouldn’t hesitate. It’s just that he’s afraid of them.

They wait for what feels like forever and Beyond doesn’t breathe at all.

There’s a weak squeal from behind him and Beyond whirls around. 

image: the killer is on the other side-and there’s a knife in Near’s chest

Once this is all over, Beyond thinks he’s going to have to take his heart and brain out of his body and manually flip some sort of switch to calm them down before he puts them back because as it’s going, he thinks he’s going to have a heart attack from horror and fear and his mind won’t stop racing. It’s like red strobe lights behind his eyes at all times, like every other second he’s being shot with electricity. The panic is making him feel sick.

He and Able are halfway across the graveyard now running and once again, the killer isn’t following. They stand at the mausoleum, Near’s body at their feet, and watch Able and Beyond weave around gravestones frantically.

“Why aren’t they following??” Able cries.

“I dunno!!” Beyond wheezes. “Be glad they aren’t!!”

“We should have bashed their head in while they were down!!”

They make it halfway across the yard behind a shed and Beyond falls down into the dirt, sucking in air like he’s never seen it before. Able leans against the wall of the shed and watches him, their hand on their arm.

“You okay?”

“ _ wheeze- _ No!- _ wheeze” _

Able looks at him for a minute and then says, “I need you to tell me the truth right now.”

“What?”

“I need the truth.”

Beyond looks up at them and falls back on his butt and smooths his hands over his hair. Able kneels down next to him. The more breaths Beyond sucks in, the less air he feels like he has.

“Did you do it.”

“Able-” Beyond says and Able reaches out and grabs Beyond’s arms.

“Did you do it??” Able asks urgently, their hands painfully tight on Beyond’s upper arms. They shake him a little. “Did you kill Roger?!”

Beyond pushes them away. He sort of wants to scream. He kind of wants to punch a wall.

“Fuck, how could you even  _ ask _ me that??” He cries between wheezes.

“You know how!” Able cries back and their voice raises a little too loud.

For a second, they sit in silence.

Able’s shoulders relax and they pull back a little, but their face doesn’t change. They look away.

“What kind of an idiot do you take me for,” they say but their tone of voice is empty, blank.

They’ve never  _ actually _ talked about what happened before Beyond came to Wammy’s. He doesn’t want to talk about it. But now might be the time.

“It was an accident-” Beyond chokes. “It was-”

“Shut up,” Able interrupts. “We’re being trained to solve murder mysteries Bee, I know an accident when I see one.” They look up into his eyes. Beyond wants to shrink back, but he doesn't. Between him and Able splits the impossibly large gulf. “You never even called for help? Not an accident.”

Beyond stares at them and the space separating their bodies.

Finally, he breathes out a weak, “I didn’t touch Roger. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Damn it, I want to help you, Beyond!!” Able bursts, their voice too loud again.

“I didn’t do it!” Beyond cries back. “Believe me, I didn’t do it!! Believe me, Able!! This one single thing, I didn’t do!”

Able studies his face and they look like they’re going to scream, but they don’t. They just start to nod.

“Okay,” they say. “Okay, if you say so, I believe you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“I know.”

They stand up now and Beyond looks up at them.

“Look, uh… Look, I’m gonna get help. I’m gonna run out and find somebody.”

“What?? What are you talking about?”

“You’re slowing me down, Bee,” Able replies. “And I don’t know how much more you can run.”

“I can, I can do it.”

“You’re gonna keel over dead before we’ve run two miles, Bee.”

He tries to laugh. He can’t.

Able throws open the shed doors and hauls Beyond up and crams him inside with the old lawnmowers and rusty folding chairs and spiderwebs.

“Stop, stop-”

“I’m gonna make it out and bring someone back and you’re gonna stay right here and not make a sound.”

“Able-” Beyond’s starting to cry now. There’s a zillion ways Able could die. It’s T minus one hour now. This has to be how it happens, they go off without him and get stabbed, he has to be there to help them, he has to be with them all the time. 

He starts to freak out.

“Shush,” Able hisses but Beyond’s sobbing, like big, embarrassing sobs, like he’s a little kid.

“Please don’t leave me, Able, you’ll get killed, they’ll kill you, please stay, don’t leave me here-”

“Shut  _ up _ !” Able hisses louder and grabs Beyond’s shoulders and shakes him hard. “Shut up!!”

Beyond claps his hands around his mouth but he can’t stop crying and he’s shaking so hard now from the fear and from the exertion of running and adrenaline that he can hardly stand upright. Maybe Able’s got a point. He’s only feeling sicker and sicker, it’s only a matter of time before he’d just fall on the ground and not be able to go any further. He hates that they’re right, he feels weak, but he can’t let them go!

“There’s no time for this!” Able whispers and then they pull him into a tight hug. They squeeze him hard for only a few seconds, clearly ignoring what must be some serious pain in their arm, and then they pull away. “I have to go! Stay here!”

“Able-” Beyond moans and then Able pulls away and shoves him inside and shuts the shed doors behind him and then he hears their running footsteps fading away.

He didn’t even tell them he loved them.

He wants to follow them, but now that he’s stopped for a minute, his legs are jelly again-he can barely stand up. He drops to the concrete ground instead and his hands find dirt and cobwebs and dead bugs, which makes the clean freak inside him recoil, but he’s too tired to do anything about it.

He sits there in the dark and waits and in his head, he replays that moment in a million different ways but in all of them, he at least says “I love you.”

Able has just an hour. He took them out of the house, he tried, he did everything, why, why didn’t it change their numbers, why couldn’t he save them, why did they  _ end up back here _ .

Then again, maybe this is the right decision. If they leave the grounds, maybe their numbers will change. Maybe this is what Beyond wanted all along. Maybe this is a good thing.

He waits for what feels like forever. He keeps checking his phone and sending Able texts and looking at the clock and doing the math in his head.

He shines his flashlight around the shed. Big shadows loom and startle him as they rise on the walls. He kind of wants to lay down on the cold concrete, but he knows if he does he’ll never get up and he needs to-for Able.

After twenty minutes, Able still hasn’t answered their texts and twenty minutes should be more than enough time for them to leave the grounds. He facetimes them. They don’t answer.

“Facetime me,” he texts them frantically and punches the emoji keyboard to add every incoherent emoji available-his code for ‘I’m panicking’. He won’t be able to explain to them why he needs to see their face, but he hopes they’ll just agree and do it and when they do, he can tell them to pull the camera far enough away so that he can see their numbers. He lets himself imagine it for a second-they hold the camera out so he can see their face and above their head and then right there in red letters- “Ashley Cordello. 100 years to live.”

Or, you know, something reasonable like that. At this point, anything would be better than “Ashley Cordello, 1  _ hour  _ to live.”

And then once this is all over, he can tell them why he needed to see their face and they’ll understand then and he won’t be alone with this terrible, soul-crushing ability. They’ll have all his secrets. How nice that will be.

At 25 minutes, Beyond’s more than restless-he’s wiggin’ out. He’s losin’ it. He hasn’t really stopped crying, which hasn’t been good for his energy level, and he keeps seeing Able dead in his mind. What if they’re dead right outside of this shed? What if they were caught at the gate? What if they’re somewhere, wishing he was there to help them, what if they’re scared or crying or alone?!

Beyond pulls himself shakily to his feet, leaning on the spider-y walls, and cracks open the shed door and peers out.

No dead Able within view and no killers, either.

He steps out of shed now.

The night is quiet. It’s 4:30-ish but it’s still so dark Beyond has to blink a few times to be sure the things he’s seeing in front of him are actually there or if the blackness is tricking his mind. 

He’s gotta find Able.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!  
this chapter is a little bit late, ik!! its been a busy past few weeks but i think it'll be better soon!


	8. twenty five minutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond finds out some terrible, awful, confusing information.

Able’s not in front of the house. They’re not in the gardens. They’re not in the graveyard. The killer isn’t either, which is at least one stroke of luck.

He’s coming back from the graveyard now when he looks over and remembers that there’s another part of the grounds they could be that he hasn’t checked yet.

It’s the dance studio.

He crosses the yard and ducks inside. It’s pitch black, so he flicks a switch and familiar yellow lights come on. There’s five of him-himself and all the mirrors, and he lets the door shut behind him.

The dance studio doubles as a rec room just past another door and downstairs in the basement, there’s a pool. Able clearly isn’t here so he’s about to continue into the other rooms when the door cracks open again and Beyond throws himself to the wall behind the door.

There’s a big, thick stage curtain hanging from the wall there. There’s curtains on all of the walls actually, to cover the mirrors, but they’re always pushed back because someone’s always using this part of the building. He slides behind the nearest one now and pulls it around himself as best he can without being obvious.

The door shuts again and someone’s inside. He can barely see through the thick cloth, but he can tell clear enough that it’s somebody-just not the killer and not Able. Some other Wammy’s kid. Ah, it’s Matt. Poor dude. He peeks around the cloth just enough to make out his face-Damn it, he has seconds. That means the killer is just around the corner.

Matt is running, trying to make it to the next door, when the first door flies open again and the killer pursues.

Matt whirls around and presses himself up against the door and he’s shaking and he puts his hands up.

“Look, dude, you don’t have to do this-” he says with a trembling false confidence and then in four different mirrors, the killer puts their knife into his chest.

Matt sputters and falls and blood pools.

A minute passes and the killer waits and then the numbers above Matt’s head fade away.

The killer looks down at their handiwork and then they lean down to take the knife out of his back. It’s pretty stuck. As someone who’s studied crime scenes extensively for several years, Beyond knows that knives get stuck a lot-there’s some sort of science about suction and vacuums or something, he doesn’t remember he just knows it gets sucked in there pretty good. The killer pulls for a while and then heaves a sigh, like this is some sort of tedious daily chore, and steps onto his back with both feet and pulls again. The knife comes out followed by a fantastic arc of red that sprays the mirror and paints the floor. Beyond feels a little nauseous thinking about the hours he’s spent on that same floor in his bare feet. The person stumbles back a little and Beyond is reminded now of Misa Misa’s body language. There’s something about this person, now that he thinks about it. The way they move, their height. Of course, the fact that they’re wearing Misa stuff. He feels a little silly being able to recognize her body language as if he knew her but, you know. He stans.

But it can’t actually be her, he thinks. Because that’s ridiculous and stupid. It’s somebody who’s, like, a fan of her, a fanatic.

The killer pushes back their hood.

It’s not her, Beyond thinks.

image: the killer takes off her mask

It’s not.

image: she turns around. It’s misa

Where he’s hiding behind the curtain, Beyond wants to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, he thinks desperately in his head. This is  _ nuts _ , what the FUCK.

He has to clap his hands around his mouth to keep from either laughing or screaming. All he knows is that inside him, his emotions are rocketing around like a hundred popped balloons. Or maybe balloons are too light-hearted. His emotions are a hundred loose missiles. He really does think he’ll laugh out of horror.

With her mask off, Misa wipes sweat out of her eyes and then puts it back on. He watches her walk over now to his speakers, the ones he usually plays  _ her _ music on. He’s got some old CDs there, just stuff people gave him since he usually uses his phone. She sifts through it casually, like she didn’t just put a knife in someone’s ribs-Matt’s ribs. He watches her pick a CD. It’s Queen. She has good taste, he thinks and has to press his hands over his mouth again to keep from laughing hysterically.

image: like the picture of beyond turning up the dial, misa does the same now, her fingers splattered w blood

“She keeps her moet et chandon in her pretty cabinet…”

He watches her return to the body and wipe blood off of the knife on poor Matt’s clothes and then she starts, well, dancing a little. She clearly likes this song-she’s bopping to the beat and for a second, she even uses the knife as a microphone, but Beyond can’t hear her sing over the deafening speakers.

“In conversation, she spoke just like a baroness…”

He thinks he’ll use this opportunity to escape. Well, he doesn’t really  _ think _ this, it’s more like an instinct that kicks in before he can run the logistics in his head. He’s moving fast for the door, pushing aside the curtain, hoping Freddy Mercury will mask his footsteps, and that’s when Misa does a twirl and sees him in the mirror.

They both freeze.

“She’ll absolutely drive you wild,” sings Freddy Mercury. “She’s out to get you.”

Misa whirls around and lunges at him and Beyond shrieks shrilly at the top of his lungs and turns and scrambles for the door.

Outside, he’s running as fast as he can, which is  _ not _ fast, and his exhaustion from earlier hasn’t completely faded. She’s gaining on him.

Queen echoes around the Wammy’s grounds hauntingly. The speakers are set to repeat, because that’s how Beyond practices his sets in the morning, so as soon as the song’s over, it starts again. “Gunpowder, gelatin, dynamite with a laser beam. Guaranteed to blow your mind.”

And then, somewhere past that shed he was in earlier, Misa just stops running. Beyond slows down too, but doesn’t stop completely, and looks back at her. She’s standing by the shed and she raises her knife and waves at him. 

Then she blows a kiss.

Beyond turns back around and keeps going.

He makes it to the gardens, which is almost a labyrinth of tall shrubs and floral designs and stupid statues and shit. It’s like a weird cross between the Shining and Pride and Prejudice except right now, it’s a little more Shining. He races through it, running head-long into plants and trees and getting mouthfuls of leaves. Killer Queen reverberates in his head like a bullet in a metal box and every blink, he sees Misa’s face and every other blink, he sees Able’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 17 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!


	9. fifteen minutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy them while you can.

Beyond had spent the day Roger died watching his numbers. He knew exactly at what time Roger was going to die and he wanted to be out of the house then, just because… Because it was a little unsettling, to know he’d be dead, to lie awake in bed and know the exact time his heart would stop beating across the building. To know when he woke up in the morning that there was a dead man across the hall. Dead people didn’t really scare him so much-in fact he might even be morbidly interested, but something about this particular death felt like a bad omen. He just didn’t want to be around, he wanted to make himself scarce. Of course, he also thought the dude would just pass away in his sleep from old age or something, not that he’d wake up with a knife in his head.

But this wasn’t the only reason he’d gotten up to go for a walk at 3am the night of Roger’s death. He’d been watching the numbers all day and he’d had an eye on Able’s numbers too, and he was starting to feel some panic. He couldn’t sleep that whole night, thinking about how soon, he’d be watching Able’s numbers in the same way he’d watched Roger’s. He couldn’t sit still. So he’d gotten up and walked around the city at night and thought about Able and made lists in his head of all the ways it could happen and all the ways Beyond could make it _ not _ happen, and then when he got tired of walking and panicking, he sat in the dance studio, where it was warm and familiar but still far enough away from the main Wammy’s building that he wouldn’t have to think about breathing the same air Roger _ wasn’t _ breathing anymore, and he just sat there and scrolled through his phone and looked at his numberless self in the mirror.

And that’s really all he did. He had no clue that someone was at that same time crawling through a window in Roger’s office to split his skull open. 

He imagines himself at the end of all this, Able testifying for him, them running away together. They’d leave this place behind and never think about anything that’s happened to them ever again.

“Momentarily out of action, temporarily out of gas,” sings Freddy Mercury for the hundred billionth time, his voice echoing strangely throughout the campus, just far enough for Beyond to pretend he doesn’t hear it but not far enough to completely escape.

He’s nearly out of the gardens when a shadow moves out of the corner of his eye and he sucks in a breath and leaps back-only for Able to come out from around a shrub.

Beyond practically jumps on them.

He holds them to himself so tightly that he’s probably hurting them, like he can’t get their body close enough to him, and he chokes out only stammering mumbles, trying to explain what he’s discovered, but he can’t force his mouth to follow his brain. He’s not making sense and he knows it.

They hug back weakly, but when he squeezes, they let out a squeak of pain and Able’s not usually one to squeak so he pulls back and looks at them.

The numbers above their head are the same but the front of their shirt is red and sticky. Blood has dried down their arm where they were slashed earlier. They look tired and scared and dazed, their glasses sitting crookedly on their nose and bleached tips plastered to their sweaty forehead. Their flushed face brings out the freckles on every square inch of them.

“Bee,” they breathe and their smile is weak.

Beyond fights through the knot in his throat to say, “What happened to you??”

“The gate’s locked,” they say. “I couldn’t get through. They locked it. I hit the keypad with a rock a bunch of times, but it just broke it more. A-And then, uh, t-they came around the corner and-” They gesture to their shoulder, where Beyond sees a deep-looking gash somewhere above their heart and under their neck. His stomach turns. He reaches for his backpack-and then remembers it’s in the shed.

He literally wants to shoot himself in the face. He left the backpack?!?!?!? All his preparation and in his panic, he forgot it in that dumb stupid dusty shed!!

“My backpack,” he gasps. “I-I had b-bandages-”

“It’s okay,” Able says quietly and then their legs buckle and Beyond catches them. Their hands are on his shoulders, their fingernails in his skin, and they’re taking shaking breaths. He notices they’re trembling like a leaf. “I-I’m afraid,” they admit. They start to cry. “I’m scared!”

Beyond thinks he’s gonna throw up. Able isn’t like this, they don’t act like this, they wouldn’t do this unless-

“No!” He says. “No, no, this isn’t it, it’s okay, I’ll help you!”

He starts dragging them along with an energy he certainly didn’t have before, borrowing strength from his fear. Able nestles their face exhaustedly into his shoulder and he can feel hot, wet tears.

They are NOT going to die today.

“We, we gotta find, like, wire cutters or something,” they say weakly. “Bolt cutters. We can cut a hole in the gate.” Beyond thinks that gate is mighty thick for wire cutters, but he’s not here to argue.

They make it back to the shed, where Beyond thinks they might find bolt cutters, and he deposits Able very gently on the floor. Back at his backpack, he cleans them up rapidly but it sort of feels like putting a bandaid over a missing limb. His phone is starting to run out of batteries, but he uses the last of it to find an assortment of bolt cutter-looking things on the walls. He grabs the biggest one he can find and hauls Able up again.

“Take more,” they say.

“I can’t carry that much,” Beyond says.

“You need a weapon.”

“We need to get out.”

They’re stumbling too slowly back through the gardens again, carefully peering around any corner and sticking to the shadows, when Able starts to gain some strength back from the shock that had sapped it from them.

“I have something to tell you,” Able says. They’re still hanging on Beyond, but not as fully now, and they’re moving a little faster. They’ve been pressing their hand over the gash on their shoulder and it’s starting to clot now under the gauze.

“What,” Beyond says.

“When you first got here, Roger asked me to keep an eye on you.” Able’s speaking through wheezes weakly. “Do you know that’s how we first became friends? That’s why I talked to you when no one else did. Because he told me it was my job to make sure you didn’t hurt anyone while you were here. And if you did, they were gonna ship you off so fast, your head would spin, and me, too, because Roger said if you did something to anyone they’d say it was my fault too because I was supposed to watch you.” Able laughs. “That’s why we’re friends. They wanted us both gone from the beginning. But we stuck together.”

Beyond peers around another corner, decides its safe, and takes Able that way.

He digests this information and after a minute, he says, “If I did something bad, would you have turned me in?”

Able’s quiet.

“You made Roger think I’m the one who set the rug on fire last year. You let me take the fall for that when it was you. You blamed me for breaking windows and stealing stuff. And remember when I first got here and you put spiders in my bed. Sometimes, I didn’t know whether to trust you. Would you have really fucked me over like that?”

Able finally laughs. 

“Beyond,” they say in gasps, real-naming him. “Do you… Think I’m a bad person.”

“No,” Beyond says immediately. Tears are making hot tracks down his face. Then, “Do you think my opinion matters?”

Able laughs a little and he looks over and drinks in their smile, weak though it is.

“Bee,” they say and their voice is almost warm and their words come out sweetly unrehearsed and too honest. Their hands on his shoulder are gentle. “I think it’s the only one that ever mattered.”

He stops, his eyes in theirs, and lets this sink in until it’s the only thing he hears in his head. Not even Queen can replace the cycle of their words in his brain. It’s like he’s put _ Able _ in the stereo and now it’s them and just them over and over and over and he’s in love.

Able is going to make it out of this alive.

They reach the gate.

The electronic keypad is, true to Able’s word, busted. The screen is cracked and it’s actually sparking a little. The gates jerk back and forth just a little bit every so often, like some kind of broken limb twitching involuntarily. Something about it reminds him of the way Matt’s body flailed on the ground as Misa wrenched her knife out of his chest. 

His stomach does some sort of pretzel motion and it’s not the brutality of it or the gore he’s afraid of-he really couldn’t care less about death. It’s just Able’s face is making a guest appearance on Matt’s body in his twisted memory and Misa is pulling the knife out of _ them _ and that’s enough to bring him to the point of nausea.

He takes Able right up to the gate and he starts trying to cut through the metal stakes. He starts to wonder if maybe it’s iron. The metal isn’t going easy.

“Let me try,” Able says, even though they’re not in a position to do anything too physical. They take the cutters from his hands and go to town desperately. They’re usually stronger than him, but he doesn’t know if that applies when they’ve been stabbed like, twice.

He lets them have their shot at it though and make his way towards the keypad. It’s not up against the brick, it’s on a little stand a few yards away, so cars pulling out can reach out of the window and hit the buttons and then drive through the opened gate.

The screen is cracked and sparking. Able really did a number on it. Half of the screen looks almost normal but the other half sticks up out of the pad like a piece of glass out of a wound and it’s display goes from black to static to rainbow to black again. Beyond taps it nervously and yanks his hand away, but doesn’t avoid a small sting of electrocution.

Able’s got minutes. Minutes. If Beyond was shaking before, he really is now. His eyes are starting to fill with tears. He tries to tell himself that maybe this is the ticket. They’re getting out, after all, they’re escaping, maybe their numbers will run out and then, like, start over or something because he was able to get the gate open. If he can open the door, he can save them.

He bites his tongue and taps the screen again and then, despite how the sparking sizzles his fingers, he tries to press the broken side of the screen back into place. His hand slips and his finger slides over a sharp end. He pulls his hand back and looks. A bead of blood. But it’s not an old wound-it’s the one he accidentally opened a few days ago at his desk with his pocket knife.

“Hey!” Exclaims Able and Beyond’s head snaps up. “I can see the cord that connects the keypad to the hinge, it’s on the other side-if we can cut it, I bet we can just pull the door open!”

They’re reaching the bolt cutter through the spaces in the far end of the gate now, at the hinge, slipping their arms through and straining for it.

“Wait, let me do it!” Beyond cries, Able’s numbers burned into his mind. “If it flies open, you could get hurt!”

He leaps forward just as Able slips more of their body in between the hinge and the brick. It won’t fit their shoulders, but they can fit their face through.

“Don’t clip the wire!” Beyond yells too loudly and then, Able squeezes the bolt cutters and electrical sparks fly from the keypad and the hinges and then the gate swings open violently fast and-

their head is on the other side of the gate.

image: beyond stares in horror, his mouth open

image: beyond still stares forward in horror

their body crumples to the ground. their neck spurts blood.

image: close up on his face

the gate is open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 14 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN!!


	10. -

image: blank

image: blank

image: blank

image: blank

image: picture fades in slowly- sneakers walking in mud

image: picture fades in slowly- sneakers walking in mud

image: sneakers walking in mud

image: wammy's looms

image: beyond looks up at it. His eyes are wide-traumatized


	11. -

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's been a change of plans since the incident at the gate.

Beyond walks back into Wammy's and all he can see is _them_.

He wades through memories, knee deep. He’s surprised that he’s not crying or screaming and he only feels a little bit sick. Where was he just now? What just happened? How did he get here? He knows, but at the same time, he doesn’t. It’s like it happened a million years ago, underwater, in a language he didn’t speak. It’s not  _ real _ . That didn’t  _ happen _ . Just because Able is not with him now doesn’t mean that they’re- 

He feels a little more nauseous now, but that’s it. It must be the shock, he thinks. Trauma does funny things to your head.

Trauma, head, he thinks, head trauma. Funny things, like head trauma, getting your head knocked off, your neck sliced, head on the ground-

He’s overcome with some sort of wave and his knees hit the tile floor and he vomits.

Then, shaking so hard he can hardly wipe off his mouth on his sleeve, he gets up and keeps walking.

He makes it to the kitchen, where he finds a meat cleaver, and he leaves with it in hand.

Back in the yard, he starts yelling. He’s swinging the meat cleaver at his side like it were a toy, back and forth and back and forth loosely. His free hand is cupped around his mouth.

“HELLO!” He screams. “HELLOOO! Come OUT!”

He wanders around a little while, shouting, and then in the distance, out of the darkness, he sees the glow of Misa’s mask. She’s coming towards him so he stops and waits. The cycle of Queen had been shut off sometime during the gate, he can’t remember now, but the silence is deafening in the space Freddy Mercury’s voice leaves behind. It’s appropriate, though. The air feels dead and something inside him does, too. All he is is the empty space Able’s voice left behind when they finished talking.

Misa’s a few yards away from him now and she stops.

“I love the knife,” she says and she raises hers in the air. He can hear the grin in her voice, even if he can’t see it. “We match!! We’re twins!

He says nothing.

Misa finally drops her knife.

“The countdown’s up, huh,” she says quietly. She peels off her mask, but he can barely see her face.

He still doesn’t answer.

“I know,” she says and she looks down at her knife and her shoulders go up and down as she sighs. “I know how you feel. At least you can say you tried, you know?” She stops again. She keeps waiting for him to say something, like he has  _ anything  _ to say to her. “I thought it’d be me to do it, but I couldn’t find you guys and then the time passed and then I was like, like  _ damn _ , did  _ he _ do it??” She laughs. It’s not funny. “How did it happen? Well, maybe you don’t want to answer that. Look, I’ve got this therapist, I can refer you to her. She’ll make you talk about it, though.”

Every time he blinks, he sees their face. Pretty black eyes, a smattering of freckles. Smiles, kind ones and mean ones. Hands that fit right into his. Their neck, the skin ragged, vomiting blood like a hose.

“Alright, Beyond, here’s the thing,” Misa says tiredly in a voice that says ‘it’s time to get down to business’. “I  _ want _ to kill you. Make it look like you did all this and then killed yourself, just because I feel like that’d be a kindness to you after everything. And also because I want as many people here dead as possible. Haha, you understand! But I actually can see your numbers, so I know that’s not happening. Me, I don’t  _ have _ numbers, but I’m willing to bet I don’t die tonight.” She raises her hands in the air, stretching like she’s bored. “So let’s just both go our separate ways, you’ll be convicted for all of this, and if you’re lucky, the judge will give you a lesser sentence for good behavior. How’s about that?”

Beyond looks down at the meat cleaver in his hand.

“None of this was supposed to be this way,” he says. It wasn’t meant to be like this.

“I agree,” Misa says.

Beyond looks back up.

“I’m gonna kill the fuck out of you,” he says. Misa blinks.

“I-hold on-” she exclaims impetuously-until Beyond dashes at her, his knife raised, screaming like a banshee. She starts and yelps and whirls around to run.

He chases her up towards the graveyard and away from the open gate out front, but not much further. He knows he can’t run and he’s not gonna try-he already feels sick to his stomach and pushing it isn’t how he’s gonna win this thing. He’s gonna win this thing being clever. And ruthless. And these are two things he knows he is.

Misa disappears into the graveyard, behind some mausoleum or other, and Beyond turns around and makes his way back to the house.

It’s so unsettling to be alone right now. For most of the night, he hasn’t been on his own and even when he has, he’s had this  _ goal _ in his mind, he’s had  _ them _ in his mind, but now he doesn’t even have that. It’s like something has gone inside his heart and wiped it clean. Time for a new goal, which is taking Misa Misa apart limb from limb.

Very weird, he thinks, that this is how everything has turned out.

The house is so dark and silent that it almost seems like a whole new place now. If there’s anyone left alive here, which he figures there  _ has _ to be somewhere, they must be pretty well hidden. Beyond doesn’t say  _ their _ name or picture them in his mind, but since he has to give them a place somewhere, he decides they’re… In the basement of the rec center, in the pool room, in the closet down there, probably throwing a little plastic wiffle ball at the wall, bored. They’re safe and hidden perfectly and just waiting for him. They’re probably clipping and unclipping their hairclip except, ouch, too far, because he knows where that hairclip is.

No, nope, they’re in the pool room. That’s all. 

Ugh, he doesn’t have time to sit around like this!! It’s time to get to work.

The first thing Beyond does is gather up all the lighters in the kitchen and all the large bottles of cooking oil and then, he takes them outside in the front to the garden and then, he soaks the entrance and the exit.

He waits at the end of the maze, a lighter in each hand.

He waits probably fifteen minutes there, that big knife in a precarious spot in his back pocket, and then he starts hearing the sounds of footsteps on mud and the snapping of twigs. 

She takes her time, unfamiliar with the maze, and then she rounds a corner and sees him and stops.

“What are you doing,” she says suspiciously, her voice mumbly behind that plastic mask. The red glow of the lights around her eyes seem to leave traces in the dark as she shakes her head. “What’s your game.”

“Why did you come here,” Beyond answers her question with a question and he forces his mind back from the atrocity he’s doing his best to block out, the one that’s lying somewhere behind him where the garden lets out.

“I meannnn,” Misa says, hanging on the ‘n’ so the word drags on. “I feel like I shouldn’t give you the whole sob story, you know?? It just doesn’t seem clever. I think Light would tell me to be secretive. So, sorry!” She shrugs too cheerfully. Her knife is still in her hand and the blood on her clothes has crusted over and turned dark. She raises her knife now again and points the tip at him. “Now step. Aside.”

Beyond flicks one of the lighters on and holds it up to an oiled leaf.

At first, nothing happens and for a second, his heart sinks.

Then, the bush bursts into flame. 

He jumps out of the way and hurriedly lights the next one so the exit is effectively made of fire. Misa squeals and leaps back.

“Stop it!!” She cries but he’s already pushing past her.

He doesn’t need to be fast, per se. He just needs to lose her enough to get her lost in here and then, he has all the time in the world.

She follows him around a few turns and he nearly slips in the mud once or twice in his hurry, bringing her too close to really lose her, so he whirls around fast at one corner and whips out his knife and goes for her face.

She ducks and slips in the mud and lands hard on her butt and Beyond takes this opportunity to disappear.

The exit is on fire and the fire is spreading and because Beyond knows the way out of this place like the back of his hand, he reaches the entrance quick and he lights that up too and then he circles the garden and works until the lighters won’t turn on in his hands anymore and then he throws them in the dirt and watches the whole garden burn to bits.

But he’s not gonna call it quits just yet. Misa’s been slippery tonight and honestly, she’s better than he gives her credit for, so it’s time for a failsafe.

(He can’t stop thinking about how weird it is to be alone right now, how no one is reaching for his hand, how there’s no one left to save, how the whole world is too silent now without a second voice, so silent that even that damn stereo in the dance studio blew out and he can’t even hear crickets.)

Back in the house yet again, he makes his way to the surveillance room, where all those handy little videos of him leaving the house the night of Roger’s death were taken. The videos are all on the cloud now and it’d be more suspicious if they’d been deleted, so he’s not thinking about touching them, it’s not that. He’s just thinking about watching the camera on the entrance to the house and the exit of the garden.

On screen, the whole garden is lit up. The edges are starting to die out now, left in charred crisps, but the rest is a steady, tall bonfire. He can hear it from here in fact. He can smell smoke and oil.

And just as expected, Misa doesn’t reach the exit to the maze. Instead, she eventually stumbles through the front door.

She’s covered in twigs and leaves and mud and blood and she looks like hell. She must have found one bush that was the least on fire and crawled underneath it, probably somewhere closer to the entrance, which is ideal. He wants her blocked off from that open gate on the other side of the garden. He watches her drag herself through the main hall and then he leans down and presses the button for the overhead speaker, the one that gives dumb announcements during classes.

(Oh yeah. Classes. This is where he goes to school. He goes to school, he’s like, in high school, technically. His life as co-valedictorian of human child trophies seems SO normal and good compared to THIS shit.)

“I’ll give you a hint-I’m on the first floor.”

Misa looks up and spins around, trying to find the speaker. He can’t hear her response.

He watches her wander around the halls and when she’s close, he leaves the surveillance room behind and presses his back to the wall in the hall just around the corner.

When she rounds the corner carefully, his knife dives into her arm. It glances off her bone and reverberates horribly in his hands and she screams. He yanks the knife out and raises it again, following her as she shrinks back, but before he can put it in her chest, she hits him in the leg. Or at least, he  _ thinks _ she hit him. When he looks down, he sees her knife in his thigh instead of her fist and then, his stomach roils and pain he realizes he should be feeling rocks him. He doesn’t really have the world’s highest pain tolerance and he lets out a choked sort of whimper and his hands drop a few inches.

Misa hauls backwards and her knife follows her this time and her back hits the wall behind her. They’re both breathing hard and for one exhausted second, there’s a lull.

“You STABBED ME!” Misa finally screeches in-between breaths.

Tears of pain are starting to prick his eyes and his leg is throbbing, but like  _ really _ throbbing, and his pant leg is getting hot and wet and sticky with blood, but this, this absolutely indignant protestation from Misa is so ridiculous, all he can do is laugh. What, of  _ course _ he stabbed her!! What was she expecting-the welcome wagon?!

She comes at him again now with a vengeance and he expects her to scream as she does, but all she does is grunt and Beyond dances away-AH! SHIT. FUCK. Putting pressure on his leg is like getting stabbed all over again, except worse because this time the shock and adrenaline aren’t keeping him from realizing it’s a stab wound. He sees spots. But he can’t just STOP, so he forces himself to keep going and tries not to yell out loud from the pain, at least to not give her the satisfaction.

He swings open all the doors down the hallway as he goes to slow her down and get in her way and in his head, his brain is whirring a million miles a minute despite the fire alarm of pain going off inside him. He’s tallying up his advantages.

Here’s what’s gonna win this for him. He  _ knows _ this place in every single way she doesn’t. He could take it apart and put it back together exactly the same, brick by brick. It’s been hell on earth for him. Now he’s going to make it hell on earth for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN


	12. -

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond considers the inevitable death of his family.

Beyond is thirteen and his parents are still alive and he’s never heard of Wammy’s House. And he’s clever and he’s loud and he’s weird.

And right now, he’s sitting, unconcerned, in the grassy front yard of his childhood home and he’s watching it burn to the ground.

Here are the facts.

  1. The house is on fire.
  2. Beyond lit the fire himself.
  3. He’s not too concerned about calling for help.
  4. His dad is in there.

When he’s not watching his house burn, he goes to public school, which bores him out of his brain. He’s a freshman in high school because he skipped a year and he spends his time mostly coloring in his fingernails in sharpie and shooting rubberbands at the backs of people’s heads and he makes as much trouble as humanly possible.

(Somewhere on the other side of the world, Able is doing the same thing-they’re peas in a pod.)

His dad does construction and his mom is a waitress. He’s just started his Teenage Rebellion years, which means he’s not on AWESOME terms with his parents right now. 

It doesn’t help that he knows he’s going to become an orphan soon.

Well, he SORT of knows. He’s got a lingering paranoia, an unexplainable fear. He’s told his parents about what he sees and how scared he is and, naturally, they don’t believe him. This debacle defines most of his childhood actually, as he is put in front of doctor after doctor and eventually, he just learns to stop talking about it. One day, he tells his parents he doesn’t see numbers anymore, even though this is a lie, and that’s that.

In his head, he’s a little confused. He’s seen the numbers and names as long as he can remember and no medicine ever helped and no therapy ever took them away, but he still thinks somehow that the doctors must be right. After all, they are doctors and he knows he’s a smart kid because he’s kind of stuck up about it, but he isn’t a DOCTOR. He doesn’t know about brains and eyes and stuff. And if the doctors and even his parents told him (over and over, you know, for years) that what he saw wasn’t real and his paranoia meant nothing, then they must be right. How COULD he be seeing these things if it was impossible?? How could he know what they meant if no one ever told him? He always knows names, but… How?? It just doesn’t add up. So in his heart, Beyond knows that his parents will die, but he ignores it and lives as normal a life as a freaky little kid like him can live. What he sees isn’t real and his paranoia is meaningless.

There’s no such thing as fate, after all.

He spends the day before he’s supposed to become an orphan pressing frayed wires together inside the family car.

His dad’s been working on it-the battery’s messed up or something, Beyond doesn’t know. His dad has tried to teach him some stuff here and there, but Beyond doesn’t really care to learn. Anyway, he’s just making sparks, for kicks. Cause like, why the hell not. Gotta pass the time somehow, right?

The car’s in his dad’s shed out back. Beyond has wandered in there and peered into the mess of wires inside the open car before and he’s seen his dad press wires together so he does it now and watches the sparks jump, hot close to his face, and the car makes some sort of sizzling sound. Sick, 13 year old Beyond thinks and he does it again.

He is happily lighting scraps of paper on fire with the sparks, an innocent and wholesome pastime, when his dad screams his name. Beyond jumps and a spark singes his finger and he whirls around.

His dad is in the doorway, red with anger. 

Beyond shrinks back a little.

“What are you doing?!” His dad hollers and storms in closer. Beyond lets the wires go and his half-burnt paper, black, flutters to the ground.

“Uh-” Beyond says.

“Why are you doing this?! What were you thinking?!” His dad pushes him out of the way and grabs him by the shoulders tightly.

Um, pfft, how is Beyond supposed to answer this. They both know PERFECTLY well he doesn’t think, period.

“I-I-just,” Beyond stammers.

“You could have burned this whole place down!!” His dad yells in his face.

His dad sort of looks like him, but only sort of. Brown skin, curly hair. Beyond gets the slightness of his face and shoulders from his mother, though. He’s wondered who he gets his eyes from-they have to come from somewhere.

Now, as his dad shakes him, he trains his eyes on that face that only sort of looks like him and tells himself not to look up-the numbers aren’t real.

His dad yells for a long time and Beyond tries not to cry, but he’s 13, you know, so give him some slack, 13 year olds cry when their dads yell, okay, it’s not a big deal. And when he’s done and Beyond is still sniveling, his dad shoves him out of the shed and then that night, nobody orders pizza for dinner like Beyond wants, they have spinach casserole, which SUCKS, so Beyond starts to plan his revenge. 

Besides, revenge is great and a practice that he wholly supports and it’ll TOTALLY distract him from the fact that his dad is supposed to die and soon. 

So the next day, he goes back to his dad’s shed and he messes around with the wires again and a fire starts. And then the shed is on fire.

It’s FINE, it’s okay, it’s not what you’re thinking, because his dad isn’t IN the shed!! He’s not in the house, either. He’s at work. 

Beyond thinks this is revenge enough once the roof to the shed collapses and then he’s got the hose in his hand. He sprays the fire. It doesn’t work. He realizes a little belatedly that he’s maybe let this get a little out of hand.

This was probably too extra, thinks Beyond as he stares up at the roaring fire, hose in hand.

Well, it’s fine though. Lost the shed. Lost the family car. That sucks, but he can say it was someone else’s fault, right? And it’s gotta just like, burn out eventually. Right?

Beyond remembers sitting in the grass to wait, just… Sitting around, which sounds indescribably innane when he thinks of it now. While the bonfire roared in front of him. He pulled up handfuls of grass and made a pile out of boredom. He had been  _ bored _ .

He got less bored when the fire DIDN’T go out. Instead, it spread. First, the bushes, dry from the summer, then their half-dead tree, and then-the house.

Now, Beyond thinks about calling the fire department.

He ventures into the front door, because the fire is on the other side, and makes it to the family phone and dials 911 and calmly explains that his house is on fire.

Then, he stands outside of the house and picks at the grass again. He’s much less bored now, even though he doesn’t look it. He sits in the grass and where he puts his hand down, a rock cuts through his finger.

He busies himself with the beads of blood and the blades of grass around him and feels sick as he thinks about how he’s gonna explain this to his dad.

“Gee, I dunno,” he imagines saying. “I guess it just spontaneously combusted.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t call the police immediately because I was like, really busy with my homework.”

“The matches from the junk drawer? Oh, uh, I dunno, I didn’t even know we had matches there, what’s a match.”

Asking what a match is is probably too far.

His parents are gonna absolutely kill him. THAT’S what he should be paranoid about, that his parents will see this and then immediately strangle him to death.

The rest of these memories become sort of foggy as the fire department arrives. Neighbors come out of their homes to watch. The roof caves and windows explode. Beyond starts to cry again and he starts to shake a little bit too with fear. Beyond feels, looking back, like these memories are fake-ish. Its like his brain went so fast with panic, it registered nothing, so he has nothing to remember. Black spots appear in his recollection once the firefighters bring his dad’s body out of the basement.

His mom and him live in a hotel room and Beyond doesn’t sleep. He thinks at first that he’s going to take a vow of silence and never ever speak again, but he can’t keep it up.

His mom has never actually says it, but she knows the fire wasn’t an accident.

Beyond knows the truth about the numbers now. When he finds his mom has killed herself two weeks after the fire, he’s not surprised, he’s just ripped into a million pieces and bleeding out emotionally.

Beyond is tried for arson in the weeks to come and everything comes out during the trial. He spends his nights at the local cell in the police office alone. He gets lucky (for once) and is only put on probation for a year. He spends another few weeks living out this probation in a random group home-and then Wammy’s steps in. The rest is history. 

He's not who everyone thinks he is. If anything, he’s pitiful and he’s stupid and he’s spent a long time trying to forget it. He’s spent a long time wondering what’s his fault and what’s the fault of fate, if his parents would have been dead anyway, why he did what he did despite knowing what he knew, if fate is escapable. What fate wants for someone with no numbers. If he should feel worse about what happened, if he could have stopped it. Pitiful is what he is, bottom line, no matter what.

But here’s what matters now: if Beyond is found here with no Misa to confess to her crimes, the police will dig up this little gem and Beyond will be dead meat. He’ll be so easy to frame, such an obvious profile, it’s laughable. He can see the news articles already-paranoid and death obsessed child to arsonist and parent killer to full-blown, knife-swinging serial killer. Like dominos. Like a house made of tarot cards.

So he needs Misa here, for proof. He may not necessarily need her alive, though. And besides, that ones all up to fate anyway.


	13. -

Misa stalks past another hall, shoving doors out of the way, in pursuit of Beyond. She’s got one hand wrapped tightly around the stab wound in her upper arm. It’s the same place she’d hit  _ them _ before, he doesn’t fail to notice.

She turns the corner, her knife swinging, growling angrily and when she’s gone, Beyond pokes his head out of the dark space behind one of the open doors. He’s hidden in a bathroom, laid in the tub behind a plastic shower curtain in the darkness, and waited until her footsteps faded away.

He’d grabbed a first aid kit from under the sink and in the tub, he wrapped up his cut leg tightly. He’s no first aid expert, but he won’t bleed out now.

She knows he’s not dying tonight-she’s already said that. She doesn’t want to tangle with him because she can see her losing score above his head. But she’s trapped until the fire outside goes out or she can find another way around and on top of that, she’s mad now. He knows what she’s probably thinking. She has eyes to tell her if he dies tonight, but not whether or not he gets severely maimed. And so that’s probably what she’s got her sights on. Not killing him-but stopping him long enough to escape, which could mean a lot of things. 

Beyond, for his part, is going to put her numberlessness to good use and just absolutely obliterate her. What does fate even have in store for someone with no numbers??

His leg still hurts to stand on. He limps out of the bathroom and goes the opposite direction as Misa down the hall.

This is when he notices that Wammy’s House is on fire.

The bushes didn’t burn out.

It’s getting hotter and hotter and he can smell smoke, like lots of smoke, and around the next corner he can see light and he hears crackling and he stops in his tracks.

Well, fuck, he thinks. Oh, this is just SO typical.

So now he’s booking it  _ out _ of the house.

He’s in the backyard now, his leg starting feel like pins and needles just a little, searching for Misa.

This is fire like he’s never seen! It’s his childhood home times a hundred, because the expanse of Wammy’s is so much bigger. It lights up the night like some sort of false daytime, turning everything red and orange and hot.

He decides to wait and see if she gets out, so he hides in the shadow under a tree a few yards away and crouches to the ground.

Beyond waits a good few minutes before his mind starts to wander.

He thinks of  _ them _ , in the closet in the pool room. After all this is over, he’ll go down there and throw open the closet door and they’ll look up and grin and the numbers above their head will read ‘100 more years left to live’ and he’ll help them to their feet and put his arms around them and he’ll hold them tighter than he ever has before. And he’ll tell them he loves them and he’ll memorize the feel of their skin and the weight of their body and the smell of their hair. They’ll make some stupid, mean comment about him taking forever, but they’ll say ‘I love you’ back.

And then! At that exact moment, he’ll hold their hands and he’ll tell them!! He’ll tell them what he sees that no one else does!! And he’ll prove it, easy, by reading strangers names or whatever, and then they’ll  _ understand _ and they’ll have everything of his, that giant cavern between them will be closed!! There will be nothing keeping them apart. He won’t be alone, they’ll  _ really _ be with him. 

He dreams about this with his knife clutched in both hands in the dark, crouching in the dirt, and he’s smiling, his eyes glazed over.

“I missed you so much,” he whispers under his breath out loud, like he’s saying it to them. In his daydream, they grin and roll their eyes.

“Don’t be so sappy,” they’d say. “Stupidhead. I didn’t miss you for one second.” They can’t really get his goat like this though and they know it because the big dumb grin on their face gives them away. They can’t help but smile when they see him.

Beyond laughs.

“Yes, you did,” he whispers.

“How do you know, loser?” they say. 

“Because I’m your only friend,” he says a little too loud, laughing a little, and then he remembers that he’s crouching in the dark all alone and whispering these things to himself.

The daydream dissipates and he’s back in the shadows behind Wammy’s, tightening sweaty fingers around the plastic handle of a large, wet kitchen knife.

Misa stumbles out of a side door after another few minutes and he hears her because she’s coughing and hacking. A thick billow of black smoke follows her. (Shame she didn’t just get trapped, which would have made this whole thing so much easier, but  _ noooo _ .)

She doesn’t see him until he’s a few feet away, but when she does, she points her knife exhaustedly and then decides against it and turns and runs.

So much RUNNING. After this, he’s never gonna run again, this is a stupid amount of running. Luckily she’s not that much faster than him.

She’s going back for the dance studio, so he follows.

Inside, the bright lights seem garish now and poor dear Matt, rest his soul, is face down in a pretty thick puddle of blood. The stereo system Misa had abused is fritzing and skipping quietly now, the speakers blown.

Misa dashes past the stereo and the body and yet again in all four mirrors, Beyond gets a pretty trippy image.

He looks awful and he barely recognizes himself. He’s covered in blood and soot and he’s limping and he’s pale. But it’s not just that. Four different times in four different walls, he’s reminded of the last time they’d been here together. They’d switched places. Who is being chased and who is doing the chasing anymore, he doesn’t know. And in that face he doesn’t recognize as his own, he doesn’t even see fear or rage or pain-he sees nothing. He thinks if he turns and looks directly into the mirror, it’s her reflection he’ll see.

She manages to get through the door and throws herself down the dark stairs. Beyond follows and they reach the pool room, where Beyond doesn’t actually want to be. He’s overly aware of that closet in the corner. Keep quiet, he says to them quietly in his mind, just for the sake of the lie.

The water sloshes quietly and the reflections on the walls make Beyond feel like they’ve stepped into another world. It’s dark and echoey and surreal.

On the other side of the pool, Misa hits the wall and points her knife.

“Stop,” she says. “I-I have something to say.”

Beyond stops.

Misa heaves breaths and lowers her knife.

“I underestimated you,” she says. They both breathe heavily. She flips up her mask again and smiles at him. The water reflects on her face.

She makes a move towards one side of the pool. Beyond follows and she freezes. Stalemate.

“I told you,” she whispers, but a whisper is like a scream in a room as echoey as this. Then, she sings his name, breathless and giggling a little. “Beyoooond.” And suddenly, even though she’s the one cornered on the other end of the pool, he feels as though  _ he’s _ being trapped. “I told you that it would ruin your life.” She clings to the shadows in the backs of the walls, but the glint of the knife in her hand is still obvious.

image: beyond scrolls through his phone

She sounds dreamy again, breathy, that same sort of dreamy way she’d sounded when they’d talked in her dressing room. He thinks she’s picturing somewhere else, somewhere nicer, the way he’d pictured finding  _ them _ in the pool room closet and smiled. “Hasn’t it already? Ruined your life? Can’t you feel yourself f-falling apart??”

She’s using one hand to gesture to her heart and the other to gesture to him as she speaks and it’s shaking just a little. Exhaustion, adrenaline, fear, he doesn’t know. “Isn’t it like-like losing… Like losing a  _ limb _ . Maybe it’s even more for you since yours loved you back. Mine didn’t.”

“After a while you just don’t have anything left,” She continues. “Everyone is dead. I have no family. No friends!” She’s starting to raise her voice. Her words bounce around his head like bullets in a metal box. “I have nothing inside me anymore! You understand, don’t you,  _ Backup _ ? You understand. You do, you understand. You and me, we’re exactly the same in every single way. No friends or family, people we love who don’t love us. Same eyes. And, well. You don’t have anything inside you, either.”

Beyond is frozen on the other side of the pool.

Misa starts to move again. He lets her. She’s taking step after slow step around the edge, her sneakers making echoey tip tap sounds as she crosses the tile. She walks as close to the water as she can get without falling. It laps gently below them. Beyond thinks he’s crossed some threshold into another world.

Misa is starting to cry a little. Her voice wobbles.

“ _ Backup _ ,” she says. “I read that in your file. I didn’t expect that Ruvie guy to be there when I broke in that morning-I just needed to double check some things about the House before I started my plan, but he went into work early. So I got him out of the way and then I found  _ you _ and I loved you the second I read about you. I thought, oh, this boy… He’ll be so easy to frame.”

“Why are you telling me this,” Beyond says-or, well, chokes. He feels rooted to the spot. Misa takes another cautious step and he lets her. She’s getting closer and he’s trying to think of a plan. Push her in the pool is obviously step one of this plan but from there, his mind’s sort of a knot. Misa looks at him with an expression he can only describe as gentle.

“Because I’ll miss you when you’re gone,” she finally says. “I really will.”

“Why did you come here-“ Beyond says and his voice cracks with emotion. Misa sniffles and smiles at him. Another step. Another. She’s near the corner of the pool now, so close to him.

“They took my Note,” she says as if that explains it. “But all I have left is Kira.” She whispers now. “They don’t know I still remember.” She giggles then at him. “I had to, I had to make them  _ pay _ , you understand, don’t you Beyond? You hate L, too, I know you do. I had to get him back somehow for-for Light, for all of this. But all that’s left of him is his  _ backups _ .”

She’s only a step away from him now.

“I’m the second Kira,” she whispers to him, her face split in a grin. “It’s my job to kill L.”

Beyond is waiting for his moment. He’s going to stab her, or shove her into the pool. There’s no need for him to hear any more of this, after all. And the closer she gets, the more dangerous she is. It’s time to go, time to go NOW. Except he doesn’t move.

Misa closes that gap between them and drops her knife to the pool floor. It clatters loudly. She reaches up and grabs his cheeks with both hands and Beyond, surprised, tries to pull away, but she sinks her fingernails into his skin.

“Wait!” She cries and he stops. “I know you’ll be upset that I’m framing you for all this.” She’s breathing the words out. His face stings from where she’s pressing in with her nails. “But it’s just so easy. No one will ever look past you because they want it to be you. You’re vengeful. You’re violent. You’re  _ perfect _ . A necessary sacrifice, you know, for Kira. And you’re a criminal anyway, you’d be dead you know. This is a mercy.”

“Get off of me,” Beyond finally manages to choke out.

Trembling, Misa lifts up her mask and then grabs his face again fast. He tries to pull away, but she squeezes his face hard. She presses a sweaty kiss to his forehead and then releases his now bloody cheeks and when she does, Beyond knows now is the time and with one hard thrust, he puts his knife in her upper chest. He’s aiming for her heart, but it looks like he actually got a little more lower shoulder area because at the same time, she shoves him and into the pool he goes.

He hits the water with a splash, flailing, and enters another world even more surreal than the last. His leg, sorta numb-ish, leaves behind a trail of red. Chlorine burns his open eyes. Everything he can hear is distant and thick somehow and he’s suspended in water. He looks up and through the surface of the water, he can see Misa’s watery form leaning over the pool, like an otherworldly reflection. Except his reflection has a giant knife sticking out of her shoulder.

Then, she turns and disappears.

Underwater, Beyond looks up at the emptiness her absence leaves behind.

A second later, Beyond finally heaves himself out of the pool with a scream, bursting through the water and back into real life. He hauls himself up onto the tile, slipping a little, trying to go fast, and finds that Misa has left her knife on the floor. His seems to have found it’s new home in her body. He scrambles for the knife and clambers to his feet and goes after her.

Outside, Misa’s making a break for it, but she’s not moving so fast. Neither of them are anymore. Behind them, Wammy’s is still roaring. Misa makes her way up through the graveyard.

Once Beyond catches up to her, somewhere on the hill behind the graveyard, overlooking the entire campus, she calls a time out.

“Alright!!” Misa wheezes and she puts her hand out towards Beyond, her other hand on the knife still sticking out of her shoulder. “Time out for one second, hold ON! Okay!! Look, I-I get why you would be like, kinda mad that I’m framing you and sure, all your friends are dead, but none of them even liked you!! And I didn’t kill Ashley!! That’s your friend’s name, right? Ashley Cordello? I didn’t kill them, that was just-just fate!!”

Beyond’s seeing spots.

“So why the FUCK!” Misa screams, bending over at the waist and hollering. “Are you so intent on doing me in!!”

Beyond doesn’t think this actually deserves a response.

“You read my file,” he finally says. “You said it yourself. Vengeful and violent, that’s me.”

“Well I hope you’re having FUN,” Misa screeches. “Because I am NOT!”

“Oh?” Beyond says and he wipes his sweaty palm on his pants, tossing his knife back and forth from hand to hand. “I’m having the night of my life, actually.” He hopes she knows this is sarcasm. Pool water runs from his hair and into his eyes and mouth. His curls and clothes are plastered to his skin. He drips a puddle where he stands.

Misa opens her mouth to make some sort of other protest but before she can, Beyond raises his knife and starts to run. She whirls around and screams and books it.

There’s a little forest-y spot above the rest of the house that a big brick wall slices in half, marking the campus area. They make it up the hill, both of them screaming bloody murder and stumbling as best they can and once Misa makes it to the top, she puts her hands on the knife in her shoulder like she’s going to take it out. She winces and whimpers and then decides to leave it in, but seeing Beyond come up the hill, she goes for it and lets out an agonized wail as she wrenches it slowly out of her shoulder. Then, shaking and dripping in blood, she points it at him and pulls down her mask.

“You know, I was worried!” She cries, high-pitched and wild. “That I wouldn’t like this kinda stuff!!! The whole-“ she gasps here. “-Killing with your  _ bare hands _ thing! It’s messy and gross and hard!”

Beyond’s closer now, but he’s so tired and down his leg, blood and water drip, and his chest feels like he’s been punched several times in succession. He’s not fast.

“But you know what!” Misa continues. She waves her knife around the air. Drops of blood spray. “I found out! I LOVE IT!” She bursts into laughter now, something maniacal, something that sounds like it’s been held back for a while. It’s wild and uncontained and ugly and shrill. She laughs like this for a while and when Beyond finally makes it up the hill, she runs at him knife-first.

Beyond leans into it and goes for her. He rams her with his shoulder at the last second and they go down hard.

He can stab her now! It’s time! He can put this knife in her brain! He’s barely aware of his limbs and they’re a tangled mess on the ground, but he knows he can do it, and he raises his knife, poised over her eye, glowing and surrounded in a heart, and hesitates for one single second because he’s so, so stupid.

It’s him lying on the ground. HE’S looking for revenge, HE’S lost everything, HE’S all alone and empty inside. She’s him. And in that one single second, he can’t do it.

Her knife nicks his neck just deep enough to draw blood, because of course it does, because he HESITATED, and while he’s busy being stunned by this, she shoves him off of her and sits on his chest. She raises her knife above her head, laughing, her voice muffled by her mask. The glowing hearts seem so angry suddenly, but it’s an anger he knows.

Poor Misa. Poor, poor Misa. And poor Beyond. He thinks there’s nowhere else you could find two insufferable bastards as miserable as the pair of them. And he wants to cry for her.

Beyond reaches up and drops his knife-stupid move-to use both hands on her wrists. She’s trying to bring the knife down and he’s straining to keep it off.

Success! He overpowers her just barely and her knife goes flying. Then, he choses the feral option and leans up and bites into her hand hard. Blood fills his mouth, sour and hot, and flesh is under his teeth. Misa screeches and he flips them again, wriggling out from underneath her and shoving her to the ground.

They wrestle in the dirt for a minute, hands on arms and knees in guts and then, miraculously, Beyond ends up on top again and he hears screaming and his hands are around her neck, hot skin, sticky from sweat, and he leans on her throat. No hesitation this time, no fear. He’ll kill himself if he has to. Poor, poor Misa. Poor Beyond.

“AH!!” Beyond is screaming and Misa’s fighting back, but she can’t get a grip on him and he screams louder and it’s taking forever, he wishes he was dead, this is literally the worst, they’ve been here for a lifetime-and then Misa’s hands on his hands loosen and she goes slack and Beyond pulls back.

Beneath him, Misa lies unmoving.

He’s been screaming, but he looks at her mask now and something comes over him. He starts to giggle and he’s trying to stop and then a moment later he’s just roaring with laughter, tears are streaming down his face, his stomach hurts, he’s running out of air.

“AH HAHAHA!”

It’s not funny. But that’s kind of why he’s laughing in the first place. He couldn’t even explain it to himself.

After a minute or so he gets ahold of himself and climbs off of Misa’s body and stands up and screams again.

“HA!! ANYONE ELSE WANT A PIECE OF ME?! ANYONE ELSE READY TO GO?!” He stumbles a little, his exhaustion starting to catch up to him, and he leans over and twists his fingers in his hair and screams again.

When he turns back around, Misa is gone-disappeared-and where she’d been, he can see the sun coming up over the horizon. It’s starting to light up the graveyard, turning his skin and clothes orange. He looks down. He’s covered in blood-his and hers and A-. Ab-. Um. His and hers. It’s running down his skin mixed with chlorine and his clothes are ruined and black with it.

He won’t go back to the closet in the pool room and he won’t go back to the gate.

He looks at the spot on the ground where Misa had been and then he starts walking back to the house and he lets the sun find new crevices in him, holes filled with blood that’s not his.

THE END

EPILOGUE

“Bee… Bee…”

“Go back to sleep, Able,” Beyond rolls over in bed and pulls the covers over his head. He feels the weight of Able’s body on the mattress beside him now, pulling at the blankets. He yanks them back and Able lies down beside him, pressed up tight against his back, their heads sharing the same pillow. “Get in your own bed,” Beyond groans tiredly and Able just laughs and tugs at the sheets a little more.

“I woke up and I can’t get back to sleep,” they say. “Give me attention.”

“No.”

“Bee!”

“No.”

“Bee…”

“Able-” Beyond says but this time he says it out loud and it’s enough to wake him up from his dream.

He lies there in the dark, the sheets over his head.  _ Is _ he awake? Was he ever asleep? He’s confused and groggy. That was a dream, it had to be, for some big, terrible reason that he can’t seem to remember now between waking and sleeping. Why, why was it a dream, what about it was so impossible-

Oh, yeah. Because Able is dead.

The weight of this crashes down on Beyond yet again, as it does every time, and tears prick at his eyes and he thinks about that familiar weight of their body next to him in bed until he realizes something.

The weight of Able’s body is still there.

“Beyond…” they rasp, hot breath on his ear.

“Ah!!” Beyond screams and whirls around and finds nothing in the bed next to him.

Beyond is being held at juvie until they figure out what's happened, which sort of seems unfair to him. It’s like calling him guilty until proven innocent, which he knows is backwards not only bc he has common sense but also bc he’s studied criminal justice for several years. 

Juvie is like prison and all of Beyond’s old fears of prison have arisen again. He’s not a big person by any means and he can’t fight or run well and the truth of the matter is that he’s an easy target-he’s the murdery orphan kid from the weird, reclusive nerd school and he wears a little girls’ flower pin in his hair. He’s gotten beat up only once so far though which to him seems like a victory-a shitty victory but one nonetheless. At least he isn’t dead. 

And Misa. He held his own against her real good for sure but that doesn’t mean he’s not still terrified. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have nightmares every night and jump at loud noises, like he thinks she’ll be behind him. He can never listen to Queen again, not to mention  _ her _ music. He feels like his life was chopped into little bits and shuffled, like his  _ insides _ were chopped and shuffled. He never thought he’d call Wammys his home and the kids his family, but now it feels like they were. And it  _ hurts _ . Every day he prays this is just some awful dream and he’ll wake up to the previous, lesser hell that his life was before.

And Able. He cries constantly and has even thrown up a few times remembering it. The fact that he’s got their hairclip almost makes it worse for him. He wears it in his hair or on his sleeve and he thinks it should be comforting but instead it just reminds him that Able is gone bc if they were alive  _ they’d  _ have it, not him. He thinks of them in a coffin in the dirt, alone and cold and scared, without even their dumb stupid hairclip to bring them some familiarity. He wants to dig them back up and put it in their hair. He thinks they must be afraid without it, without him. These are feelings that he knows are beyond logic, but they make his eyes fill with tears of anxiety and sadness anyway.

He’s been seeing things. Or hearing things. Which would be ok because he’s been seeing things his whole life, but those things are real. This...

Well, he sees Able.

Sort of.

He hears their voice calling him and feels them in bed with him or their presence at his side. He sees their hands wrap around the corners of walls, their sneakers under tables, the shape of their body in a crowd. And maybe it should be comforting to him, to feel like his best friend is with him beyond the grave but he doesn’t feel comforted. He feels afraid. 

He feels haunted. By everything.

So, in a nutshell, his life is hell right now.

At breakfast, Beyond eats the garbage they give him, which is tasteless eggs, and clips and unclips Able’s clip in his hair. He hates the feel of it there just because it reminds him of reality.

He can’t stop thinking of how afraid Able must feel. 

Except they can’t feel anymore, they feel nothing-they’re gone.

He clips and unclips it again and that afternoon, some bigger guys corner him and kick him into the wall. He’s got some serious bruises and his arm feels broken. He rigs the ringleaders bunkbed so that that evening, the top bed falls on top of him in his sleep and he cracks five ribs and Beyond laughs hard as they take him away, stupid, loud, maniacal, ‘i’m crazy’ kind of laughter. He sits on the floor of his cell and points as the kid rolls by in a gurney, hysterical.

This isn’t helping his case, though. Beyond can hear Able call him stupid.

"You dumbass idiot," they’d say. "You think this dumb stunt is gonna convince a jury to let you go? That you’re safe around civil society?!" Then they’d make some kind of wisecrack about how he only has a rock for a brain because that was their favorite insult and Beyond cries himself to sleep loudly.

In the yard during the day, some of the guys play sports, which only makes Beyond think of Able more. He hates sports. He'd never tell them but he does. They just aren’t fun. So while other people play basketball, Beyond sits on the bench and picks at the hem of his shirt.

"Bee..."

Beyond’s head snaps up. A shiver of fear wracks his whole body. He looks around. There’s no one except the makeshift basketball team.

"Bee..."

"Able??" Beyond chokes. 

Suddenly, across the court, someone throws the ball and it rolls towards Beyond. It passes a group of kids and by the time it stops, it’s not a ball anymore.

All Beyond can see is choppy blonde hair lying on the pavement and a trail of blood and he leaps up from the bench and presses himself up against the wall. He hears the creak of the metal gate swinging.

"Beyond..."

The head is rolling to face him and Beyond is paralyzed.

"Hey!!" Yells some kid from the court and Beyond’s head snaps up. "Can you throw us the ball??"

Beyond looks back down. It’s still Able’s head. Blood is pooling and their face is turning towards him.

He turns and runs.

He hits the chain link fence on the other end of the yard and screams his head off.

"Let me out let me out let me out!!" Hes screaming and then he’s overcome and he falls to his knees and pukes.

"Alright," says the state attorney the next day. "Birthday, Beyond. Funny name."

Beyond stares at the table in front of him and says nothing.

"One serious previous charge from when you were... thirteen? A handful of petty theft charges. A few public disturbances. And now... this."

She’s a woman in a suit with blonde hair in a ponytail. She doesn't really look like she trusts him. 

"I didn’t do it," Beyond says blankly, his mantra.

"No one did, hun," she says, which means she definitely doesn't trust him. "And you say... Misa Misa did it. This Japanese rock star."

"Yeah," says Beyond.

"Youve gotta be fucking kidding me, you sound absolutely insane," Able says in his head. "You sound like you’ve had every screw loose and now the whole machine’s fallen apart. You sound like you just crawled out of the peanut gallery. You sound so deluded, this is the dumbest story, she’s gonna go home and tell her family about the crazy kid-"

"Shut up," Beyond growls.

"What?" Says the state attorney.

"Oh. Sorry, nothing," says Beyond. 

“You are so, so hopeless!” Able says and they’re half pleading and half laughing at him. He looks up and imagines them standing behind the state attorney, making faces and rude gestures. He gives them a weak smile and they smile back.

Beyond is allowed to go to Able’s funeral. Wammy and Roger are dead and the institution is falling apart, but there’s still enough money and coordination to get each kid a nice funeral, so Able has something nice. Beyond cries a little but not nearly as much as he thought he would, mostly because of shock. He can't believe it’s really Able they’re putting into the ground.

He makes a scene at the burial.

It’s all closed casket, of course, and some priest or whatever has gotten up and given some spiel about dying young and the fields of heaven or something where Beyond is sure Able was probably cutting the heads off all the flowers, and then they drive to the graveyard.

Beyond rides in the limo on the way there, as he’s the closest thing to family that Able has and also one of the only people left alive from Wammy’s anyway. A guard from juvie goes with him, is with him all the time. He has a taser  _ and _ a gun, which seems like overkill to Beyond, and he’s a stoic sort of stocky dude, the exact kind of guy you’d picture would be a guard at a juvenile detention center. Beyond doesn’t try to make conversation with him and he doesn’t try to make conversation back.

He sits across from him in the limo.

“This is a cool ride for you,” Able sys. Beyond looks up and pictures them sitting next to the guard guy. “How fun. I never rode in a limo.” They bark a sour laugh.

“I wish it was you instead of me,” Beyond says.

“What?” Says the guard.

“I’m not talking to you,” Beyond says.

Able laughs.

“I wish you were dead, too,” they say. “Then we could be dead together.”

“That’d be nice,” Beyond says wistfully and when the guard glares, he decides to stop pretending like Able is there.

The burial is held under some kind of canvas tent and there’s a machine that’s supposed to lower the coffin into a big metal box. The priest says a few more things and now it’s lowering time. 

Beyond’s overactive imagination works against him and he imagines that inside the box, Able is alive and panicking and afraid. He sees their hands against the top of the coffin, unable to scream for him because they can’t get a breath of air. They’re crying, they’re going to be buried alive. Beyond’s hands started to shake. Maybe he should bite his tongue and stomp on his own foot or turn around and go home. He might have tried to control himself if he felt like he had anything at all to lose. He doesn’t know a single person at this funeral, he has no family or friends, he’s already in prison, everyone already thinks the worst of the worst of him, so, you know, why  _ not _ have a mental breakdown in public?

“WAIT, STOP!” Beyond screeches when he can’t bear the picture in his imagination anymore and he breaks out of the safe distance he’s supposed to keep and throws himself onto the coffin. There’s some gasps and yells and Beyond scrambles with the coffin lid, starting to panic. “I’M GETTING YOU OUT OF HERE, I’M GETTING YOU OUT!” He screams. All he can picture is Able inside, crying and scared and waiting for him to save them.

The guard is on him then, trying to haul him away, until they both lose their balance and the machine holding the coffin creaks and then the coffin below Beyond falls and he falls with it straight into the hole.

There are a lot of loud cracks and creaking and splintering sounds and Beyond screams and then, before he knows it, he’s looking up from six feet underground.

Faces of funeral goers he doesn’t know look back at him.

He keeps prying at the coffin lid and crying until the juvie guard and some other funeral goers pull him out, practically yanking one of his arms out of the socket, and he’s dragged into a van and left there.

He was supposed to put a handful of dirt on their coffin or something, but he can’t now, and he doesn’t think he could have brought himself to do it anyway.

The third night Beyond wakes up to feel Able’s invisible body next to him in bed, his cell door is also open.

He gets out of the bed and stares.

His cellmate is still asleep.

He looks back at the door.

Able is standing, back towards him, at the very end of the long hallway.

He feels all at once a horrific sense of wrongness.

This isn’t good. This isn’t sweet. It isn’t some Patrick Swayze moment, they aren’t making ghost pottery together, there’s something demented and wrong about this. He doesn’t think the thing at the end of the hallway is Able. 

His stomach is somewhere at the floor with his feet.

Then, Able turns and disappears down the corner.

He follows.

He knows it’s wrong and he’s scared out of his pants and he doesn’t think he’s actually chasing his best friend’s ghost, but he goes anyway. He goes because one, the cell door is open. So of course he has to go. That’s just simple logic. And plus if he finds another open door, who’s to say he won’t just… Waltz right on out? That’s a tantalizing idea. But he also goes because two, whatever was baiting him at the end of the hallway is totally demented and unnatural but damn it so is he!! And he’s angry and self-destructive and whatever would happen to him now couldn’t be worse than what had already happened to him before. It clearly wants to be followed, and he feels sick following it, but… Might as well see where it’s trying to lead him. He’s been hugging rock bottom for some time now, so he has nothing to lose. And if he can get the haunting to stop, all the better.

Able’s distant ghost leads Beyond down hallways he’s never been before. He’ll turn one corner to find them at the end of another one and follow them down that direction and again and again and again. He’s sort of lost and he’s sort of confused.

A few turns after he realizes he’s hopelessly lost, he starts trying to talk to the ghost.

“Able?” He says and it comes out of him like a choked whisper. “A?”

The ghost doesn’t respond.

He stops at the next turn and watches the ghost stand at the end of the hall.

“Able?” He tries again. “Are you… Is this you? Where are we going?”

He feels like it was the wrong choice to speak to the ghost. A knot of fear and sickness forms in the pit of his stomach. This is wrong, he’s followed a monster into a trap. He feels like he’s followed it into hell.

The ghost is only a few yards ahead of him now. It starts to move, but not to turn down a corner. It’s head tilts up, bleached hair falling back, to stare up at the ceiling, but  _ it keeps going _ . Beyond watches in abject horror as Able’s ghost rolls its neck backwards like some sort of unholy slinky trick, bones snapping and creaking, to look directly behind themself at him.

This is the first time Beyond has seen ghost Able’s face. It’s upside down and staring with unblinking eyes and it looks like Able, almost, but Beyond’s not fooled-it’s face is twisted and dead and inhuman.

Beyond hasn’t breathed at all for the past few seconds. He’s rooted into place.

Able’s ghost, frozen in the neck-breaking position it’s in, suddenly lurches towards him. Beyond jumps and screams and suddenly, Able’s ghost, twisted up like some sort of demented pretzel, is coming at him at rocket speed. Beyond whirls around almost too late and runs.

Laughter rocks through the metal halls, following him, and the sound of the gate at Wammy’s, including the squelching and cracking of Able’s neck being crushed, all in slow motion and loud enough to pop his eardrums. He’s running as fast as he can and crying and he doesn’t look behind him, but he can hear the ghost’s feet and the squishing creaking noises of it’s spine and broken neck.

He runs for what feels like hours but is probably only a few minutes and then he finds his cell again and he throws himself inside and the door slams behind him and then, it’s all over and the ghost is gone.

After the sun came up and Misa vanished, Beyond walked back down the hill to the charred remains of the House and poured himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast in the half shouldering kitchen and then threw up into it and passed out at the table. He woke up to hands on his shoulders and he yelled disorientedly as someone put handcuffs around his wrists behind his back.

He was arrested immediately and stitched up at a hospital, handcuffed to the bed, and then he sat in a cell in the local jail and then that night, he was taken to juvie and that’s how he ended up here. He’s been in juvie for almost a week now.

The morning after following Able’s ghost, Beyond is exhausted and frightened. He’s told no one of his encounters and he doesn’t really have anyone  _ to _ tell. It’s getting worse now though. He feels fingertips on his skin at all time, and eyes on the back of his head. He can’t rest. When he does, he hears the faint creak of the gate and he snaps to attention again.

He spends the day like this and wakes up again that night to see Able’s ghost at the end of the hall but this time, he doesn’t follow. He sits in bed and cries instead. He thinks that’ll be the end of it until morning, but then, Able’s ghost walks backwards again until it’s in his cell with him and he’s pressing his back to the wall and trying to scream to wake up his cell mate, trying to get help, and Able stands at the doorway and their head flips backwards ( _ squish, crunch, crack, squelch)  _ and grins at him. They don’t move their mouth, but words come out anyway in a voice that’s barely theirs.

“Help me,” they say cheerfully, the smile splitting their face. “I’m underground.”

Beyond screams and covers his ears. 

He pockets a plastic spoon from breakfast and when he goes back to his cell, he snaps it in half and uses the sharp end to split open his finger-that one spot, the same spot. It might even scar after all this, he’s not sure.

He sits on the floor and squeezes blood out of the tip of his finger and builds a ouiji board in red on the concrete. Then, he takes the round end of the broken spoon and places it on top of the dried smears of blood.

This is either clever or colossally stupid.

“Able?” He whispers. “Are you here?”

He waits for something to guide his fingers on top of the spoon towards letters on the board he’s drawn. Nothing happens.

“A? Ashley?” Beyond almost never real-names them. It’s supposed to mean he’s extra serious. He tries again. “Ashley Cordello?”

Suddenly, the spoon end slides across the concrete.

Beyond watches it and suddenly thinks he’s going to pee his pants.

It stops on HELLO.

“Are you Able?”

“YES.”

It could be lying. He doesn't know much about ghosts, but he’s lied enough himself to know that he can’t just fall for anything.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Are you haunting me?”

No answer.

“Why, Able?” Beyond whispers. There’s no answer again for a moment so Beyond goes on and his throat threatens to close with tears again. “My life is already hell. I-I can’t do this, I can’t live without you.”

At Wammy’s House, the gate creaks in the wind and Beyond shudders hard.

The ouiji board gives him no more answers. He sanitizes the cut on his finger with soap from the bathroom.

The cell door slams open and Beyond jerks awake. He can hear the sound of flesh squelching. He stares at the bed above him in the dark. His cell door closes again slowly and then SLAMS open again on it’s own. He refuses to look. He stares at the dark and shakes and tears run down the sides of his face and into his hair. He knows what’s on the other end of the hall and when it comes into the cell with him, it sticks it’s face through the hinge and SLAM SLAM SLAM and they’re screaming and bones are breaking and Beyond is covering his eyes with his palms and wailing.

“Are you okay?” The attorney asks. Beyond looks around himself. He thinks he’s fallen asleep standing up again. Where is he, what’s happening? He’s starting to get confused.

“Able-“ He says. “They, I was talking about Able.”

“We were talking about your trial.”

“It was my fault.”

“Mr. Birthday-“

“Why can’t I be dead. Holy fuck, why can’t I be dead.”

SLAM

SqueeeeeakSLAM

SqueeeeeakSLAM

SqueeeeeakSLAM

Beyond sits up, borderline delirious. When’s the last time he’s slept? His whole body feels like it’s been put under a giant meat tenderizer.

The cell door slams over and over and at the end of the hall is Able’s ghost, their back to him, and he stands up shakily from bed.

“Fuck it,” he breathes. “Fuck this, fuck this.” His throat is closing with tears.

SqueeeeeakSLAM

While the gate, no door, no… Gate. Door? While it’s open, Beyond slips through. It slams again behind him and he can hear screaming from somewhere, somewhere sort of distant, panicked screaming, someone’s stuck in the gate.

He looks up at Able’s ghost.

He follows.

If he finds another open door, he doesn’t think he’ll go out it. He’ll follow Able into hell, though. He’ll let them do whatever it is they want to do with him.

He follows.

Able leads him down hallway after hallway, just like before.

He thinks these hallways aren’t here during the day. They’re all impossibly long, impossibly dreary, impossibly empty. They turn in on themselves in ways they shouldn’t be able to. He’s not sure where the light is coming from but it’s a sickly yellow and it’s dim.

After what seems like hours of this but is probably only thirty or so minutes, he croaks out a weak plea. “Able,” he says. “Please, please just… Kill me.”

Able takes another turn.

Beyond follows.

They take another.

He follows again.

They start to turn again and Beyond screams.

“ABLE!” He yells. “STOP!” Then, he cups his face in his hands and moans. “Stop it, I can’t take anymore, I can’t do this!”

They turn the corner.

Beyond follows.

Around this corner is not another dark cement hallway. Around this corner is the electric gate.

It’s night. The gate is open. Able is slumped in the corner in between the hinge, pooled in blood and rot.

Beyond stops where he is. He looks down. His finger is bleeding, his hands are on the gate control pad. It’s silent.

His whole body is trembling so hard he can barely see straight. He’s making choking sounds in the back of his throat.

That’s when Able’s broken body pulls itself together and stands up.

Beyond is frozen in place.

Able’s headless body walks around the gate and scoops up it’s head and sits it back on it’s neck.

Beyond can’t breathe.

Able approaches him. There’s a name above their face, but no number.

They don’t look alive, but they don’t look… Grotesque at least. Their skin is bloodless and their eyes and cheeks are sunken and hollow and down their shirt front is stained horribly in black and dark red, but they look at him like they were alive and they smile.

When they reach him, they pause and then they give him a playful punch on the shoulder.

Beyond finally heaves in a breath and clutches the gate control pad and lets out some sort of wail.

Able laughs.

“Oh, calm down,” they say. “Never seen someone decapitated before?” And their voice is so real and familiar and normal that Beyond falls apart immediately into tears.

Able, not really the gushy type, folds their arms and waits for him to get ahold of himself, which he does just barely.

“I’m sorry,” he wails. “I tried, I tried so hard to save you.”

“Clearly you didn’t try hard enough,” Able says and Beyond chokes on another breath, in horrific pain. His heart feels like it’s being dissected with a spoon. “That was a joke,” Able says awkwardly.

Beyond falls into the grass because he can’t bare to stand anymore and Able sits next to him. Beyond cries into their shoulder for a long time and Able lets him.

They’re laying back together in the grass and looking at the stars and Beyond entwines his fingers with Able’s.

“I miss you too, you know,” Able says.

“Is that why you’ve been tormenting me.”

“Oh, please, you’ve been tormenting yourself. Don’t act like that was me.”

Beyond sits with this for a minute.

“I don’t blame you, either. I mean yeah, I’m like, SO pissed off that I’m dead. I’m mad as hell. But like, that’s not your fault.”

“I’ll join you.”

“Not for a while you won’t.”

Beyond’s throat closes. He wants to beg them to let him.

“You’ve got other things to do,” Able finally adds.

“Like what,” Beyond breathes. He blinks away more tears. “I have nothing to live for. Literally nothing.”

“That son of a bitch Misa Amane is still alive.”

Beyond sits with this for a minute, too.

“You really gonna check out without giving her another piece of your mind?” Able continues. “YOU die while SHE just keeps on doing her thing??”

Beyond can’t answer. There’s a knot in his throat the size of Wammy’s itself.

“I’m going to prison,” Beyond finally says once he’s able. “They’re probably gonna try me as an adult and then probably give me the electric chair or something.”

“Ha!” Able sits up and looks down at him. “Yeah, right! That’s not the Bee I know. Just shuffling right off to the electric chair because someone else told him to, come on! You won’t do that. You’ve got revenge to get. And you LOVE revenge!”

“I do,” Beyond muses with a nod.

“So you’re gonna GET out there and you’re gonna HUNT that Misa down to the ends of the Earth!” Able cries. Beyond sits up now too, slumped over his legs tiredly.

“I don’t want to do anything without you,” he says quietly.

Able reaches up to their hair and unclips their blue flower pin-sorta gross now with blood but, you know, and then they reach over, cold fingertips brushing his face, to pin it in his hair.

Beyond takes Able’s hand again and squeezes it. Able looks back up at the stars. Their neck stretches, crusted with blood, hanging on by a thread.

“There’s something you wanted to tell me,” they say.

Beyond swallows and nods.

“What is it.”

“I-I…” Beyond squeezes their hand again and he studies their face. “M-My eyes. Her eyes.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I see… Names. And… Dates.”

Able looks back down at Beyond and gives them a smile.

“Cool,” they say.

“Do you… Know?”

“Yeah. I know. I mean, I do now that I’m dead. I’m sorry you never told me.”

Beyond scoots closer and nods.

“I’m sorry, too.”

After another few minutes, Able climbs to their feet. They help Beyond up and then, they take his hand and lead him to the other side of the gate-out of Wammy’s.

He wakes up with their clip in his hair and the heat of their hand still in his. Tears are dried on his cheeks.

He looks around. It’s still dark somehow-everyone is asleep.

His cell door is open. Beyond gets up and walks out.

Down the hall is a door he’s never noticed before. It’s labeled EXIT and it’s ajar.

He pushes it open and he leaves.

MURDER EYES

Obsessions album

Misa Amane

I see you

I love you

And everything is red and black, the colors of my passion

I wonder if I’ve killed you

And fate that brought us here today

Will soon tear us apart

CHORUS

And I’m doomed

Cause you’re doomed

And everything I’d do for you doesn’t matter in the long run

Cause I see, oh baby, the day you’ll break my heart in two

I’m counting down the numbers

Murder eyes

I pray for 

Your salvation

I’m damned, I’ve known it from the start

There’s something wrong about me

But I’d save you if I knew how

I’ll give my soul for your soul

I’d add to yours my numbers

CHORUS

But I can’t save you

I see your face and dread sets in

The heartbreak of a lifetime

Because you’re dead

And I am alive

(clock ticking sounds)

(Misa screams)

CHORUS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!!


End file.
